Clinton Once Sent Sanders a Thank-You Note for His Work on Health Care

She didn’t always find it as problematic as she seems to now.

Dennis Van Tine/ZUMA

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


With Bernie Sanders zooming up the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton has taken to attacking him on several issues, most recently his proposals for health care reform. Speaking in Iowa on Monday, she called his single-payer plan a “risky deal” and said, “His plan would take Medicare and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act health-care insurance and private employer health insurance and he would take that all together and send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors.” She told the crowd that it would be a mistake to “start over,” as she said Sanders was proposing.

Yesterday, Clinton’s daughter Chelsea took another sharp swing at Sanders and his Medicare-for-all plan. The younger Clinton alleged that Sanders’ proposal would leave millions without health insurance by wiping out Obamacare and Medicare.

But it turns out that Hillary Clinton didn’t always think Sanders had a poor grasp on health care reform. On Wednesday, Sanders posted an old photo signed by Clinton praising him for trying to increase access to health care.

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

INDEPENDENT. BECAUSE OF YOU.

Mother Jones has no billionaires calling the shots—just readers like you making fearless reporting possible

Donate