Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #521: Nicholas Kristof, Dr. Anne Rimoin, EJ Dionne, Jane Kleeb, Buck Sexton

Episode Date: February 29, 2020

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 2/28/20) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Forever. I just love my job. Get tickets now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters May 1st, directed by David Frankel. Welcome to an HBO podcast. from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maher. Okay. All right. Since the topic of the night is yours, let's go to you first, Doc.

Would having a public health care system like Medicare for all, good question, make it easier to deal with, but that's a great political question we didn't get to. You know, what a time for that issue in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, I could see that really helping Bernie, but the question is, would a public health care system like Medicare for or make it easy to deal with the pandemic? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, it would.

I mean, you think... Well, we don't know what it looked would look like yet. But just in general, I mean, you think about a pandemic and you think about illness in general. And the issue is, is that everybody needs health care. And if you have somebody who can't afford health care who's sick, not able to take care of themselves, Right. Those people are everywhere. Those people, I mean, everybody is everywhere.

And so really, we are as healthy and as safe as the forest and least insured, least capable person of taking care of themselves. We're all in this together. And so that is a perfect example of how we should all be in this together. Thanks a village. I mean, what matters presumably is universal coverage. It doesn't really matter whether it's a single-pair system or multi-pair system. Right.

So it doesn't have to be medical. for all. It just needs universal coverage. A lot of people go to work sick now. Exactly. Do they not? Don't a lot of people in America, even before this, go to work? Well, a lot of people go to work also not knowing that they even have this, right? Which is one of the concern. Yes. Well, yes. They looked like I'm crazy. But I think that the big issue here is this issue of work culture. So we're telling everybody, listen, if you can stay home, if you don't feel well, just stay home and don't go to work. But there are a lot of people that don't have a choice if they get to go to work or not because they're not going to have a patron. This is the only country in the world that doesn't have paid leave. Bombs are dads whose kids get sick and they have no family leave whatsoever work, which is sort of, I think, one of the big underlying issues we're going to face in the election.

Right. No, I agree with you completely. And it's this issue of, you know, are you going to go to work if you're sick, if you can't put food on your table, if you can't pay your rent, if you're not going to be able to take care of your children, yourself, your elderly parent. I mean, it's not fair just to be able to say. say, well, you know, everybody should just do better and be good public health citizens and stay home. We need everybody to do better. And that means also supporting businesses that have good

family, pro-family policies and making sure that we, people who are business owners are mindful of this also in allowing people during this time period in particular. If people don't feel well, it's actually in your best interest to let them stay home and to encourage people to stay home. We're not a country that prepares well, are we? We don't think in the future. And our rural hospitals are closing. And so when it comes to policies like Medicare for all, or if a single-payer system, whichever one we're going to go down, or a public option, that would not only help in situations like the coronavirus, but it helps in just the obesity issues that you were talking about addiction. Life expectancy

and all our health metrics. American kids are 55% more likely to die by age 19, partly because of this question of universal, lack of universal. Lack of universal. And young people are tired of us talking about it. As a country, we've been talking about fixing our health care system for 50 years. Like, we know what the solution is, like, let's get on with it and let's start electing people who are actually going to do it.

You do Obamacare, right? So that was a move. It was a step in the right direction, no question. Supposed to fix things that apparently weren't fixed. And it would be more of it. It did. A lot. No, no question about it. And some states block the Medicare expansion. It's happening in the Raston. The voters had to take it into their own.

Trump administration has tried to sabotage it at every turn. We know that. They're in court now. You would not agree. Yes. I mean, no, they do not like Obama care. That is for sure. They do not like, right.

That is a true thing. But that's not how we used to do things in this country. If we pass something, then they maybe got together and then tried to improve it. That's certainly what happened. Look, I mean, there's a few... I'm sorry, I didn't know. I was just going to say, I mean, the issue of pre-existing conditions, I mean, Democrats won on that. That's a win.

I mean, across the meeting that everyone now, no one now goes forward. So, we've got to get rid of that, right? So there are areas where the ball has been moved the way that progressives, liberals would want it to. Although the administration's litigation would overturn Obama-Keran when then would bring back pre-existing conditions. Verbal support is not the same as supporting a policy that actually ensures it. And just on your point, again, on this radicalization of the Republican Party, which has pushed almost all moderates, people who would have been happily Republican 30 or 40 years ago, a good example of that is, our food stamps, Bob Dole

and George McGovern, who could not have been farther apart politically, got together and said we've got a hunger problem in America and we have to do something about that. If a Republican did that kind of thing with anybody, any Democrat

on the other side in the Senate, they might face some of those consequences you talked about. They were both World War II veterans. They both remember... That's right. They both remember what it was, especially Bob Dole. They remember what it was like to come home and have the entire

community take care of it because Bob Do you think the Democrat Party is not the furthest left than it's ever been? I mean, you keep talking about the radicalized Republican Party. I'm just wondering. The Democratic Party, I mean, we have an open socialist as the frontrunner, right? A simple statistic. If you ask Republicans who they are ideologically, two-thirds are more

conservative. If you ask Democrats, they're split, half liberal and half either moderate or conservative. If you look at the voting patterns in Congress He's only the frontrunner because they have They've split. They're all beating each other. The majority of Warren and Buttigieg, a few people, I'm sorry to me. Right, but if...

They're close to him. Okay, but if Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Biden, and Klobuchar were all one person, ooh. They'd be really, really rich. An old gay man who throws staplers at your head. No. That would be the frontrunner.

And that may happen in two weeks. We may see that. Bernie Sanders may not be the frontrunner because three of the frontrunner. That's absolutely right. Three of them may drop out or something like that, and then we will see. So I don't know. I don't think even most Democrats identify as liberal. No, that's absolutely right, especially in our communities of color, where black, Latino, Native Americans,

they are not flaming liberals, as you would like to them to think that they are. Very moderate on social issues and very liberal on economic issues. They want to see our government get back to the job that we believe, that it levels the playing field, that it brings fairness, and that the mantra that's something. Senator Wellstone used to say is true for all Democrats, that we all do better when we all do better. And that's what we have to get back to our Democratic Party in order to heal these kind of divides right now

in order to beat Trump, which is the ultimate goal, of course. For some of you, good, great, great. Well, I mean, honestly, it is, I'm telling you, it's not going to go well for your boy. It's just not. No, I'm sorry, because of... What does that even mean? I mean, this virus is something he cannot lie his way out of.

No, but that's... You can't... He said it was a hoax today. What do you think about, just answer that. What do you think about that? He said it is their latest hoax. You don't think it's a hoax. He doesn't think it's a hoax.

Of course it's not a hoax. Why is he saying it? He's saying that what's the hoax is the way that Pelosi and Truman or others are saying that there's been an insufficient response that he doesn't know what he's doing when we don't even know how many cases we have and no one's died yet.

But your point about accountability is important because he can't, if there are people that are dying from this in large numbers, the stock market's really low. Yes. Trump's going to suffer. I wouldn't be able to see you. It's not going to go well.

It said it's not going to go well for your boy. Right. But you're assuming. I mean, we'll see what ends up happening. We'll see. But the point I'm trying to make is just that there will be accountability here. So why are people trying to force it before it's there? It looks like Trump's Doregents.

When I've seen people with the masks on the street, now occasionally you do, and it just reminds me that these America always things, these things are not going to come here. We didn't think it was with terrorism. And then terrorism came here. and maybe AIDS, I think, was in the world before it came here. And now this. And environmental destruction on a level that other countries have seen.

It always is going to come here. We've had pandemics stretching back from the origins of the Republic. Yes, New York City has a history of cholera epidemics where they were stacking up Irish and African-American, and Irish immigrants and African-American freed slaves down on Lower East side by the thousands over the course of a few weeks. So this has been, and, you know, people were saying, where's the government on this one? I'm just saying the party's over in the sense that this country

has periods where they party the gay 90s that Tony gay 90s the roaring 20s the go-go 80s and we've had it in the last 10 years and then the party ends for one reason or another we are going to

have to have it. I just think we're going to well when you lose six trillion dollars in a week and people are freaked out about a pandemic which is inevitably coming I do think It's bad. It's going to be a little less of a party. It's bad. I call an Uber now.

That's right. Well, if we had an economic inequality that was already here, right? So we have the millionaires and the billionaires and then you have everybody else. And so we as a party have to start fighting for policies that matter again. Instead of going out and kissing strangers, people are going to be inside and taking care of themselves a little

more. And then we'll party again someday, I promise. Thank you, everybody. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher. every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.