-Our first guest tonight
is a United States senator from Vermont.
His best selling book, "It's Okay to Be Angry About
Capitalism," is out in paperback February 20th
with a new afterword. Please welcome back
to the show, Senator Bernie Sanders,
everyone. [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Welcome back, Senator. -Good to be with you, Seth. -First of all,
I want to congratulate you. You were nominated for a Grammy
for Best Audiobook. -Lost again.
-Lost again. You lost to Michelle Obama. Everything's so political
these days. -[ Laughs ] -How quickly did you RSVP
"no" to going to the Grammys? -Pretty quickly.
-Yeah. -Despite strong
family opposition. -They wanted you to go.
-Grandchildren wanted. -Everybody wanted to be a plus
one to grandpa at the Grammys. Now, real quick, when
you read your audiobook -- because obviously, this
is your book and you read it -- this is a book
about being angry. Did the people who were editing
you in the booth ever say, like, "Maybe can
this next read -- could you be
a little less angry?" -Was I angry for 16 straight
hours? Is that your question?
-I guess -- Is it possible? -No. I had some
boring statistics that I had to read,
you know. -That's very smart to put
in the statistics. -Three people own more wealth
than the bottom half, you know.
Yeah. -A few things to bring it down.
-Right. -Some people that I imagine
maybe are not thrilled to get a call from you would be
pharmaceutical executives, and you have managed
to wrangle them in for hearings this week
in Washington, DC. This is your office doing this. This is you reaching out
to have these hearings. What happens when they hear, you know,
"Bernie Sanders on Line One?" -They are very unavailable. -Yeah. -Look, our healthcare system is, I think most people know,
is dysfunctional. We pay twice as much
per capita for health care as any other people. We don't have enough doctors,
nurses, dentists. Our life expectancy
is not only lower than other major countries,
it's getting worse. And if you're working class
or poor, the gap between rich and poor in this country
is over ten years. So the system is failing. And part of that failure
is the incredible greed of the pharmaceutical industry. So the questions that we're
gonna ask these top executives, very simple -- why in God's name are you
charging us, in some cases, ten times more for the
same bloody drug that you sell people -- sell to people
in Canada or in Europe? Ten times more. [ Cheers and applause ] And Seth, what happens is --
And this is really crazy stuff. One out of four Americans
go to the pharmacist -- doctor writes them a prescription,
go to the pharmacist. They can't afford
to fill their drugs -- to fill their prescription. So what happens to those people?
They end up getting sicker. Maybe they end up
in the emergency room. Maybe they end up in
the hospital, at great expense to the system --
financial expense -- not to mention human suffering
and sometimes death. So what you got is, like many
other entities in Washington, you have
a pharmaceutical industry which has unlimited
amounts of money. They made $110 billion
in profits last year. They have 1,800 well-paid
lobbyists, former heads of
the Democratic Republican Party. They spend zillions of dollars
on campaign contributions. But I think what
the American people, whether they're Republican,
Democrat, or independent, want us to do is say,
stop the bloody greed, substantially lower prescription
drug prices in America. -Now, this is something
of course -- we've talked about this
in the past. I feel almost every Democratic
administration, politicians promises
to do this. Is there anything in the first
three years of the Biden administration that
we should be optimistic about? -Yeah, we made some progress. And of course, the industry
is going a little bit nuts. The reason that we pay
so much more than other countries
is all of these countries, by the way, have national
health care programs which guarantee health care
to all people as a human right. Makes sense to me.
All right. We don't. But when you have
a national health care system, you sit down
with the drug companies and you say, "You want
to sell your drugs into the system?
Good. Let's negotiate a price." That's reasonable.
That's intelligence. We have never done that.
So up until a year ago, the drug companies could charge
any price they want. They can come up
with most weird reason double, triple,
quadruple prices. What we did in a bill called
the Inflation Reduction Act is to begin -- begin the process
of negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare with
the pharmaceutical industry. It's a small step forward, but it is very, very important.
We got to expand that greatly. The other thing we've done
is for older people on Medicare. They won't pay more than
$35 a month for insulin if they have diabetes.
That's a step forward as well. -That's a step
in the right direction. It's very exciting.
I want to ask, we talked about on the show
because it was so out of the ordinary
to all of us. It was a labor
hearing in November you were presiding over, and one of your
Republican colleagues, a senator from Oklahoma,
almost came to blows with the head of -- one
of the heads of -- a labor leader here
in the United States. Let's show the clip first,
and then I'd like to ask you what was going through your mind
when this happened. Do you want to do it now? -I'd love to do it right now.
-Well, stand your butt up, then. -You stand your butt up.
-Oh! Hold on -- Hold on -- Stop it. -Is that your solution
to every problem? -No, no. Sit down, sit down.
-Look at you. -You know, you're
a United States senator. -Okay.
-Sit down, please. -All right.
-Can I respond? -Hold it, hold. -If we can't -- no.
I have the mic. I'm sorry. -This is --
-Hold it. You'll have your time. -Can I respond?
-No, you can't. [ Laughter ] [ Cheers and applause ] -I like -- Even -- Even if we couldn't have
heard you, I knew this was you. -Like ET's finger, wasn't it? -Your hand already looks like
a sock puppet from a "Sesame Street." Now, what was -- what was going
through your head when -- I mean, by the way, nice job. You kept it together there.
It did not come to blows. That must have felt like
a personal victory. -This is the state of
the United States Senate. We've prevented a fistfight
in a committee hearing. Wow. What next? -Well, what was going through
your mind when, you know? -Yeah, it's crazy stuff. And it's -- what is
particularly upsetting, Seth, you know what the purpose
of that hearing was that nobody knew about
after all of that? So let me tell you,
in case you didn't know. We were talking
about corporate greed and the very positive role
that unions are playing in standing up
for workers in America. Now, nobody got to learn about that
because that was what happened. But, you know, that's what
we were trying to do. -I feel like your book, "It's Okay to be Angry
About Capitalism," the photo that you chose
for the front makes it look like you're a guy who's not going
to let any nonsense happen when he's in charge.
That's, like, very much like, "You don't want me to roll
this shirt up." Seems to be the energy
of this one. Were you happy
when you picked this photo? -Was I happy?
-Were you? I mean, I'm going to stop
saying "were you happy?" when to you, Bernie?
[ Laughs ] -I look determined.
That's a good look. -Yeah, yeah. Determined.
You look very determined. I have a lot more
to ask you about. Your determination will be more
with Senator Sanders right after this.
