Why Trump is making Bernie Sanders look good

President Trump’s slow and standoffish handling of the federal government’s coronavirus response is starting to make some of Sanders’ big-government prescriptions seem timely and perhaps even prudent. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman joins Myles Udland to discuss.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Let's switch gears a little bit here and talk about a column you just wrote on Yahoo Finance, which is how Donald Trump is making Bernie Sanders look good during this whole brouhaha. And you know, it is April, so we have finally moved on from March.

But there was a tweet a couple of days ago that said, back in the month of March, that's when Pete and Amy and all these others actually dropped out. I mean, the beginning of March, we were still talking about the primary like it was a thing that's relevant in the conversation. Now, everyone's completely forgotten about it. But I guess you haven't forgotten about Bernie Sanders yet.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. And it's not April 1 anymore. It's April 2, so this is not an April Fools joke. I've been a big critic of Medicare for all because it's just way too disruptive and way too expensive. That's Bernie Sanders's plan, you know, for total government control of the health care system.

But what is going to happen with the coronavirus recession is, we are going to-- this is going to blow the lid off all the big problems we have in our health care system right now. So this big stimulus bill that Congress passed, it covers-- so it says that insurers must cover the cost of testing for coronavirus. But that's only testing and that's not treatment. And that only works for people who have insurance.

And look what's happening right now. All these people who are losing jobs, many of them are losing insurance. And we've got a giant hole for people who need to be tested for coronavirus. Who's going to pay for that? But then, let's say you have it. For all the people who have it, if you have insurance, the regular rules of insurance apply.

Congress has not said insurers have to cover all those costs. And if you don't have insurance, you frankly have terrible options. You can hope that Medicaid in your state might be able to cover you. If that's not true, you're stuck with this old terrible last resort which is you just go to a hospital and hope they can take care of you, which they're required to do.

So you know, Bernie Sanders has been saying Medicare for all, we need to cover everybody. Joe Biden doesn't favor Medicare for all. But he does say we need to have universal coverage with a new limited private government-- a government plan that keeps private insurance in place.

And President Trump, meanwhile, still wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration is actually a party to a lawsuit trying to do that. I think the Trump administration basically has an indefensible position on health care right now. And I think this is going to explode as an issue in the election come the summer and fall because there are going to be so many people who don't have coverage for this virus and don't know what to do. And so far, Washington has no answers.

MYLES UDLAND: All right. And then-- yeah, they're going to get those seven-figure hospital bills. And I think that's not really going to go over well with anybody because it's not really fair, it's not really right, and it's not really the way things should go.