Pay-to-play politics cuts "a hole in the parachute"

Amy Goodman interviews Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee on Tuesday's Democracy Now!

Sanders: "So you have the drug companies, the insurance companies, the medical equipment suppliers, who today make huge amounts of money, billions and billions of dollars, off of healthcare, fighting us in an unrelentless way through lobbying, campaign contributions, and advertising to make sure that the ... function of the system is to make profits for the private insurance companies rather than quality healthcare to all people. And, Amy, you cannot begin to imagine the power of these special interests who spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions on the process."

DeMore: "I think our assessment is—excuse me—that he’s [Sen. Ted Kennedy] trying to achieve a smaller hole in the parachute. I mean, I think, at the end of the day, this isn’t going to work. And what’s going to happen—the Republicans, by the way, in terms of Grassley, they’re going to fight a public option just as hard as they would fight single payer. I mean, this is the insurance companies’ influence in politics."

More on the tape!