NY Times: Fact-Checking Bernie Sanders on the Campaign Trail

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8. A few excerpts

WHAT MR. SANDERS SAID

“Four years ago, when we said that health care is a human right, we were told that was a radical idea, that the American people wouldn’t accept it. Poll just came out the other day, consistent with other polls, 70 percent of the American people support a ‘Medicare for all’ single-payer program.”
— Asheville, N.C., in May

This is exaggerated.
While “Medicare for all” has grown more popular since Mr. Sanders campaigned on it in 2016, not all polls show as many as 70 percent of Americans supporting it.

As lawmakers began working on a health care overhaul in 2009, support for a single-payer system hovered from about 30 to 50 percent in most polls. When the Affordable Care Act became law a year later, national discussions of single-payer systems dissipated and sporadic polling showed that public opinion toward such systems did not change much from the end of 2009 to 2014.
...

In polls from Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 to 59 percent favor such a system. Reuters has found 60 to 70 percent support it, but about 30 to 40 percent say they are less likely to back Medicare for all if income taxes will increase. Similarly, in recent polling by RealClearPolitics, 65 percent of respondents backed a Medicare for all system, but support dipped to 55 percent when told that the system would eliminate private health insurance.


WHAT MR. SANDERS SAID

“Four years ago, I was in a national TV debate. And the moderator said, Senator Sanders, what do you consider to be a major foreign policy and national security crisis. And I think they expected me to say Al Qaeda, ISIS, which are very serious threats to this country. But I responded and I said the major national security crisis we face is climate change. And the moderator actually laughed. Well they are not laughing today.”
— Asheville, N.C., in May

This is misleading.
In October 2015, during the first Democratic primary debate, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked the five major candidates to name the “greatest national security threat to the United States.”

Mr. Sanders’s response, “the global crisis of climate change,” earned applause, not chuckles, from the audience. Video of the debate does not show Mr. Cooper or anyone else laughing either. Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, also listed climate change, as well as the Islamic State and the nuclear threat posed by Iran, before Mr. Sanders responded.