by A. Shaw
Nurses demanding Ebola safety and training were joined by US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a rally in Oakland, California, on Thursday, Oct. 16. He supported their call for every hospital in the country to be prepared in the case of an outbreak. “You deserve protection,” Sanders said, “not only for yourself, of course, but so that you can do your job.”
Sanders chairs the US Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging and is considered by both bourgeois liberals and bourgeois reactionaries to be expert on health issues.
Sanders fought budget cuts demanded by Pres. Obama and Tea Party reactionaries that reduced the Center for Disease Control’s budget by $1.3 billion. Sanders strongly opposed cuts to CDC’s funding related to the fight against infectious diseases like Ebola, MRSA, etc.
Sanders argued that the US people are entitled to health.
In defense of the budget cuts, Obama and the Tea Bags argued that health is not an “entitlement,” but only a policy, even in the midst of the spread of infectious diseases.