Money for wars but not vaccines? Bernie panel ladles harsh truths as Americans face paying out-of-pocket for coronavirus treatment

A panelist who took part in a coronavirus roundtable hosted by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders scoffed at the idea that free vaccines to combat the illness would be untenable, noting that there’s always cash to fund US wars.

The Vermont senator assembled a group of medical professionals in Detroit on Tuesday to discuss how the United States could best deal with the ongoing health crisis.

During the question and answer session, one audience member highlighted how Sanders has promised to provide free vaccines against the illness, and asked how the self-described democratic-socialist plans to pay for it.

Sanders chuckled, and then yielded to a member of his panel, Deborah Burger, who serves as the president of National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses’ union.

Burger pointed out that when she was a child, she received the Polio vaccine for free and “nobody asked ‘how [do] we pay for it?’” She argued that people at the time understood that trying to profit from the Polio vaccine could have resulted in countless American children facing life-long health problems.

How insane and cruel is it to suggest that we have to figure out how to pay for it when we can actually go to war and not ask one question

Burger’s outburst resonated with many on social media, with one comment concluding that “any decent person” could see that the US healthcare system is “immoral and cruel.”

Others were less enthusiastic about the idea of declaring coronavirus a public health emergency worthy of taxpayer dollars.

“Yea people are going to put in millions so they can give it away free... communists,” one person quipped, to which an unimpressed Twitter user fired back: “Is war free?”

For some Americans, the huge financial burden of paying out-of-pocket to treat or prevent coronavirus has already become a reality. In February, a Miami resident who had returned from a trip to China voluntarily checked himself into a local hospital after fearing that he could have contracted the virus while abroad. His results came back negative – but he was rewarded for his due diligence with a bill for $3,270.

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