Bernie Sanders on healthcare: what the evidence says · JRE #1330
“a great nation when we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality, when 87 million people can't afford to go to a doctor today.”
What the evidence says
Sanders' 87 million figure closely resembles other large healthcare-access statistics he has cited around this period, including a similar 85 million figure. PolitiFact traced that 85 million claim to a Commonwealth Fund analysis finding 43% of working-age adults, uninsured or underinsured, and rated it defensible only when underinsured people (not just the uninsured) are counted. That reporting indicates Sanders' large healthcare-access numbers are typically built by combining multiple categories, such as uninsured plus underinsured or people who delayed care due to cost, rather than reflecting a single direct measure of people who literally cannot see a doctor. No source directly verifies an 87 million figure specifically, so this should be read as a plausible order-of-magnitude estimate assembled from combined survey categories rather than a precise, singularly-sourced statistic.