i haven't been here for what six years it's been since i last spoke here it's wonderful to be back in seattle a couple of things rainier exists today was the first time i actually saw it on the ground i've seen it from the air but i've been to seattle a few times and i lovingly teased all of you and i don't believe you it's not really there but it is there and it's beautiful and thank you so much to sherry for opening her home for me to stay and it's been a real treat and you know it's always good to see friends friendly faces again nancy the last time we were here i stayed with nancy and it was so nice always good to see john nichols was wonderful to be and i also now serve as the executive director of progressive democrats of america so i'm i'm i'm i'm very proud of that and i don't worry about it being a nonpartisan meeting i would like to see bernie be the president of the united states i don't know what will happen with that i think one thing i do want to share with you is i was at a bernie rally in denver last saturday evening he and hillary were both slated to speak at a democratic party dinner that evening at the sheraton hotel but hillary held two smaller more well controlled events in colorado during the lead up to that dinner bernie decided to do convention center denver convention center rally on saturday evening and twenty thousand people showed up it was it was pretty pretty impressive and the and the most impressive thing to me there were a couple of things that really stood out for me i wrote a little bit about this earlier this week on common dreams but a couple of things stood out to me the diversity of the crowd was pretty impressive you know early on i was seeing a lot of people you know if congress mcdermott was still here i'd say you have too much of that yet but the crowd was very diverse very different than it had been early on in bernie's campaign we had a lot of young people a lot of very diverse cultural backgrounds in the room lots of kids were there with their parents which was wonderful it created a really powerful energy in that room the other thing that was fascinating to watch just from the perspective of having been a part of political activity for most of my adult life and for many of us who came of age in politics in the sixty's you know we have been active in political life but we haven't done so well in some of the things we've done but bernie's message people repeating that from the crowd to him you know from the the more humorous moments of when he'd say huge in the go go go you you know and that was that was wonderful to hear but what was was really pretty moving is when he quoted abraham lincoln from the gettysburg address and what he said of the people by the people and for the people and the crowd own that that was pretty powerful it wasn't in kind of a cheering kind of raucous way it was in a very meaningful way and i haven't heard that in my adult political life before so whatever happens going forward in this political season and i don't think any of us can really predict that with great accuracy and maybe john will be able to do so better than i can but you know i don't think people would have predicted much as bernie says now nine months ago would we all have predicted this what's going on now no and talking with yesterday talking with that wonderful group of students that i was so pleased to be with yesterday and asking them what is it about bernie sanders campaign that mean arguably here's the oldest person in the race running who is appealing to the youngest people in the voting public and the resoundingly message to me has been whether it's the group yesterday or other places has been honesty integrity you know the issue of being told the straight truth about things and that matters it matters a lot what we say to young people they don't you know they don't suffer fools a lot i don't think this generation is smart a lot smarter than people give them credit for a lot smarter than i was at their age you know the world comes at them fast and furious and you know through every imaginable method possible you know i'm on twitter and facebook and you know they're done with facebook and they're on to other things they do a little bit of twitter but they're on to other stuff that i don't even know what all of that stuff is but what they're really what they really care about whether it's here in washington state where by the way university of washington students are doing a march for bernie on february twenty seventh i saw them handing out little slips of paper yesterday that were very much student student slips of paper so i hope you'll support the work that they're doing it matters so very much so thank you students for being a part of that yesterday it meant a lot to me to hear that and it means a lot that you're in gauged in this election it is changing the face of this election it truly is and and i often say you know i said this to a few people in the crowd in denver on saturday night two was if there's nothing else my generation gives you nothing else thank god we're giving you bernie sanders at this point right because we've kind of blown it i you know what my generation we had all these we had all these hopes you know and dreams you know we were the make love not war generation you know the people who came out of the hippie culture of the sixty's and the beatniks before that  you know we were going to change the world we were going to make it a different place and put an end to war and put an end to poverty and be something more than what had happened and then we got busy we got busy in our lives and our families and raising kids and trying to stay survive through state flesh and how many of you remember that word stagflation and all the things and then the reagan years old god the dark reagan years in the one nine hundred eighty s and you know and then coming through that and getting the first bush president i hear jeb bush dropped out just a little while ago on the race jabs out jeb's out so you know we did that but only only as we come to this point at least for me you know coming to this point in my life you know i've always stayed a little bit active in politics but it's been pretty anemic in terms of our ability to get things done in this world so we didn't want to i don't want to leave you a mess i want to leave you something better especially where healthcare is concerned for me many of you have heard my story lots of you have seen me on a big screen in a pink flannel nightgown do you know if you saw sicko so you don't have to hear too much more about that how everybody say how many of seen sicko everybody pretty much that's good be real fast and give you the two minute elevator elevator speech on how we ended up there my husband larry and i have been married for forty years we always had health insurance always made it a priority have health insurance did what most american families do we'd take a look at which employer was offering the better plan for our family and then make a decision to go with that plan but when my husband had a serious corner artery disease and actually he said peripheral arter artery bypass were replacing his arteries apparently one of the time you know he's he's a tall slender athletic guy so it's not you know this is a genetic thing for him very much so but then i was diagnosed with cancer and it was no our our insurance benefits and our whatever we had in savings or home was no match no match for the health care system and how quickly the bills were ringing up and how quickly the dunning calls came from hospitals and and other providers who wanted to collect their money that were deductibles and co pays and out of pocket expenses and i always tell people the last straw for me was i was sitting in my office at the newspaper where i worked i was the editor of a small town newspaper in south dakota the black hills pioneer the longest publishing newspaper in western south dakota on the black hills pioneer published published news of wild bill death on august the second of eight hundred seventy six so i actually i was very very proud to be a part of that kind of journalistic history really i truly was and i was very proud of the fact at the time tom daschle was the senate majority leader at the time and my newspaper because we were in such a conservative part of the state had never published anything about time to national they only wrote about the republicans and i when i became editor said we're not doing that anymore we are going to publish about we're going to write about everybody but in any case i was sitting at my desk one day and somebody came and got me and they said donna there's a process server at the front desk for you and i set up process server and so i got up and i went out and it was i was being sued by a dermatologist i had had some of the cancer treatment i had had left some pretty bad scarring from some radiation therapy and of the six thousand six hundred dollars that that treatment cost six hundred of it was my responsibility that ten percent i had tried to work out monthly payments this dermatologist didn't want to so he was suing us for that six for want of six hundred dollars we had to declare bankruptcy because there's only one way in this country to get out from under being sued like that a declare bankruptcy and people say six hundred bucks could you borrow that from somebody the reality is by the time most families get to that point they've already done that they've borrowed from everybody in their family in their social network their neighbors and it's to millie a to the point where it changes every personal relationship you've had you know people will hear your phone on the your voice on the phone and their tone of voice will drop because they're afraid it's down and larry calling to borrow money again and sometimes that was and we just had nowhere else to turn so for want of that six hundred dollars we had sold everything we had and so we went bankrupt became one of the many many many thousands of people who go bankrupt in this country every year as a result of medical debt that has not stopped with the affordable care act i know people would like you to think otherwise they'd like you to think that medical bankruptcy is a thing of the past it's not it's not because think about the story i just told you six hundred dollars did us in because it wasn't as if we wanted to go bankrupt it wasn't as if that was the course we wanted to take you know i was raised like many of you were you don't do that bankruptcy is for those people who are irresponsible who take out too much credit to get big screen t v s or take on cars or other debt that they shouldn't be taking on i was raised that you pay your bills you always pay your bills and it was heartbreaking and it was humiliating and it made me have a gut wrenching shame in my life that i had a hard time shaking still have a hard time shaking it and the only reason i talk about it as openly as i do is because it's still going on the affordable care act the worst word in that entire thing is affordable because it's not my monthly health insurance premium just for me just for me it's more than seven hundred dollars a month just mine and some of you've already heard this story today so why are this weekend so i'm going to go really quick through it this past year has been a pretty awful one for me in terms of of health i tell people i don't know why i continue to have to provide the perfect storm of an example in our health care system for what's going wrong but apparently i do and last i had been treated for anemia for about two years nobody had found out what was wrong even though every p p doctor around me who knew i was getting transfusions and iron infusions everything said where are you bleeding your losing blood somewhere and finding it st patrick's day last year march the seventeenth i was standing in the kitchen fixing lunch and i felt kind of a who like something happened really badly i started to pour sweat from everywhere on my body and i could i couldn't speak i thought i was i thought i was going to go down and i thought i  won i wonder if this is what it feels like to die i thought i think i'm going to die and so i just laid across the kitchen counter my husband was only twenty feet away and i couldn't say a word i couldn't speak and i finally finally after a moment or two i said i said you know larry i need help and he came and got me and took me to the recliner and took my blood pressure because he has a cough as a heart patient my blood pressure was eighty over fifty not good but the first thought in our minds wasn't to dial nine one one at least it wasn't mine i guess why the cost i was afraid of two things afraid the cost of the ambulance and afraid they'd take me to a non kaiser facility those two things i thought oh my god i can't do this so anyway larry poured me in the car we drove like crazy which wasn't the smartest thing to do down to the hospital we get there they admitted me of course because i had lost a tremendous amount of blood by that point had just had two units of blood the saturday prior thank god or i probably would have died anyway so six days later after they worked me up can't find where the bleed is they knew i'd had a gastric bleed but didn't know where it was sent me home with an i v site that looked a little bit crappy as the nurse put it well crappy i got home hundred one temp when i got home i tried to call the hospital back and you all any patient in here knows the response you're going to get when you call the hospital back call your primary care provider your were done your discharge call your primary care provider so i sent a picture to her because kaiser allows you to send pictures and send email so i did that no response no response by the next morning i had one hundred three temp was really feeling very sick anyway long story short i ended up with mersa i was in the hospital back in the hospital it damn near killed me damn near killed me i had docs in here will know the name of how you do this you know but they took a vein from my wrist to my chest wall had to come out i had pulmonary embolisms like crazy i mean it was it was it was not good not good and then by the time i went home nine days later from that i had to be on a bank of my ass and pretty high pressure in a biopic for almost six weeks with in home nursing care kaiser didn't want to provide care which was interesting because on the surgeon got angry and said oh yes you will there were ten drains in my arm so in any case i worried the biggest thing i worried about my family was there with me but the biggest thing i worried about was not that i was going to die it was that i wasn't working i wasn't working and i know john's going to talk a little bit about modern working life i'm one of those people that has to pull together a number of sources to make an income and if i'm not working i'm not earning and in the background is that seven hundred dollar premium that's looming over me plus all the bills that have to be paid i just wanted to get the heck out of the hospital i didn't care whether what was going to happen i just knew i had to get back to work i had a poem and a pulmonologist talking about one side my husband holding the cell phone so i could do a conference call on the other and i was begging some people who should know better really to be honest some employers who should know better to don't give up on me please don't give up on me please give me time to get well that's what it's like in america in health care under the affordable care act so we in colorado have a different kind of plan going on right now in terms of we still have direct access to the ballot in colorado thank god because our legislature we had to legislators who were  recalled because of their stance on gun control the republican right wing was very effective and targeting two of the most effective legislators we had on the democratic side and thrown him out of office that put a chilling effect everything the democrats do in the legislature so when our chair of the health committee irene aguilar's her name came forward with a plan called colorado care in how to advance a universal healthcare program for colorado it was going nowhere in the legislature because those people were afraid they'd be targeted for recall as well no we're in the legislature goes down they're not going to move it they're not going to take it out of committee they're not going to do anything so a number of people said let's go see if we can get signatures and get this thing to the ballot and ask the voters of colorado whether or not they would like to see a universal a truly universal health care plan so very aggressive signature campaign you have to get a certain number of signatures calculated on the basis of congressional districts and how many voters there are in all those kinds of things so people knew they had to get about one hundred thousand signatures from registered voters in colorado that wasn't going so well you get six months to do it wasn't going to x ray it was our second try it kind of a health care related ballot initiative the first time we didn't get to the ballot this time they fought fought and fought one person ended up literally putting a second mortgage on her home to hire paid signature gathers at the last minute to gather enough signatures to get colorado care to the ballot so it will be on the ballot on november eighth of tw and it's a it's a it's not a perfect as as p h p will sometimes point out it's not a pure and perfect single payer plan but to put it in perspective it's a heck of a lot better than what we have right now with the affordable for me the difference would be with a three point three percent in payroll tax and a six point seven percent employer tax for me the difference would be taking my cost for insurance from seven hundred  dollars a month down to about one hundred forty what a huge difference that makes for me what and for so many people in colorado we still have tens of thousands of people who have no coverage we have families who work up in the communities of aspen and vail where you know there's an incredible amount of money flying all over the place but there are a lot of service personnel up in those communities and they can't afford the insurance that's being offered a because insurance they're allowed to go ahead kind they only do two point eight percent as much for age rating so we're very we're hopeful in colorado we are not confident as yet and there will be a call that will go out to other states i'm very certain of this early in the summer to ask people to come canvas to come do some things to help we'll get some people who can phone bank from other locations we're going to need help from other states because whether or not we can get colorado c across the finish line to the to really win in colorado it would be a lot easier if bernie sanders was the presidential candidate much easier it'll be a tougher run if it's hillary but it'll be an even worse thing if the republicans end up with a lot of energy going into the presidential election it'll be very difficult so a lot will depend on what that ticket looks like going forward but we're very pleased it's on the ballot we're very pleased that we have a chance to make some inroads on this i don't know what will happen i can't really predict people ask me there's a part of me that says there's no way in hell there's just no way because already the chamber of commerce has come out against it a former governor bill ritter is come out against it no shock there ritter laughed at me  last time i talked to him about single payer unfortunately john hickenlooper the governor now made some negative comments in the past couple of weeks about colorado kerry after he had promised the state senator that he would stay neutral on the come on this issue so it's an uphill battle but it's a battle it's a battle thank god i mean this is this is the first time we're really seeing people all over the country i'm also very lucky to be part of a group called one pair states which other people have p t a was instrumental in starting if you don't know what one pair states is it's i see my two minute warning here this is good  one pair states as a group as a group of people who came together and wayne pennsylvania the p t a regional meeting in two thousand and ten and we decided that it would be good if state based single payer activists were talking to each other about what's going on in their states sharing successes things that were challenges what how we could move forward together and that group has stayed together now for six years that's pretty impressive and we have monthly conference calls we try to bring issues that are important to those states who are working together on single payer and we don't know if this country will go state by state by state or whether we'll eventually get it's hard to imagine this congress isn't it ever doing something on a national level it's really hard to imagine but we're not stopping and the only way you'll stop me from fighting for a single payer is if i'm dead and so far the health care system has not been able to do that to me but i keeps i keep coming back i keep coming back for more so thank you so much seattle for what you're doing and for washington state you guys are awesome you know we look a lot to our neighbors our neighboring states that are close in the west and we have to stand up with each other and for each other and make sure that health care becomes a human right for all of us thank you very much as i grow older i become more and more embarrassed by my introductions not because it they're not nice things in all this but b because when you're in a room with so many excellent activists  heroes of mine people who i have followed for a long time and celebrated their good work i am embarrassed a little bit to be recognized in any kind of way because the fact of the matter is that dr john who was just up here being very modest and talking about how old he is is actually one of the greatest activists that this country has an and he is so damn distinguished that's exactly what we want in somebody advocating for economic and social justice put a good suit on the guy looks great nice more radical than most people dress up like hippies objected to in the introduction was a reference that is as if it were something inappropriate with three to socialized medicine i actually like that term socialized medicine i even like socialized security union organizing jonathan knapp who is the head of the seattle education association who has made the teachers union in this town have to remake it as an activist aggressive group that doesn't see itself as separate from the community but in fact connects the struggles for public education to students and parents the community and the teachers who deliver such a wonderful service  finally donna smith i gotta tell you don i'm sick and tired of hearing of your health problems i have to tell you man i whatever it takes to get you well i am on board am on board and if you tell me that a single pair health care system is the way to make you healthy and make you secure and make your life what it ought to be then i am for a single payer healthcare and i got to tell you the funny thing about donna as a sick is she gets as unhealthy as she gets she somehow figures out how to send an email asking you to do something more for the cause and so i doubt very much that you are out of the loop for nine days that it does not make any sense to me not that i know about you but i want to tell you something out and tell you something the struggle in the state of colorado for fundamental health care reform was revitalized when donna took that struggle on and she didn't do it alone she would never ask for all the credit unto herself but she's the sort of person that makes other people want to throw in and join the fight and so i i think you're going to win and i think you're going to win because people are going to recognize what a wonderful and glorious and joyous struggle it is to make sure that health care is no longer treated as a privilege but and let me just say how very happy i am to be in seattle tonight i am so thankful that you pulled me away from watching donald trump's victory party in south carolina there is you could never give me a greater gift although i am slightly sorie i am slightly story that tonight i miss the opportunity to see the last of the bush's leave the political playing field if there was ever a greater lie told in politics and that's a pretty big realize if there is ever greater lie told in politics it is with this fantasy we heard for the last week that somehow the people of south carolina who i look i know they're not perfect i know they have flaws that's where the civil war started on the wrong side i got a lot of problems with south carolina but i am sorry i was horrified by the insult that was given to them this week when repeatedly pundits on television said that in south carolina there was an astrologer for the bushes let me tell you we may be a perfect country maybe an imperfect people but brothers and sisters i don't miss bush the first i don't miss bush the lesser and i am not going to miss jeb t so i'm so glad to be here with you even though i did miss that opportunity to say goodbye to the bushes joe i'm especially happy to be in seattle because this is a single payer town now  caught us now with us tonight but former city councilman nicholas cotta guy your city council passed a resolution i believe it was a two thousand and nine putting seattle washington on record with hundreds of other communities across this country asking the congress of the united states to begin to initiate a single payer health care system for all of america so you're on record you've done the job right unfortunately seattle is not america seattle's part of america seattle leads very well and when i look at this room and all you folks the fact of the matter is that you've got something real going on here and i want to celebrate that that's why i have come i want to celebrate what physicians for a national health care program does in western washington the wonderful work that you're doing it's so vital i want to celebrate your new student chapter this is this is fantastic mountains and it was very cold day and i remember when hundreds of students from the university of wisconsin medical school marched up our state street to the capitol in there in the e i've got a doctor there whites scrubs and joined this saying as young people as young people who were training to become physicians to join this health care system that their commitment was not to get rich their commitment was to provide care to human beings and the fact of the matter is that the future of health care reform in this country will always be driven by young people it will always be driven by those who go to medi whatever area of it be they nurses be they doctors whatever they do who go to it because they're absolutely committed to this vision that we can provide care to people who need it and that we do not do so we do not do so as a privilege do not do so in multiple tiers we do so because a human being no matter what their wealth no matter what their position in society a human being who can be made healthier by the human touch by the application of medicine by the simple act of caring and understanding the need that exists that that is that's the baseline for a civil society that's at the end of civil society that's not some sort of goal you seek as you move forward to build a humane and decent society that is the beginning point and that is why the right has fought so hard against the minimal reforms of the affordable  they know full well that when you provide health care for all as a human right then you begin to break open every other struggle to say that housing is a human right to say that all the basics of life are human rights that education is a human right brothers and sisters we don't have limited human rights the fact of the matter is we must have expansive human rights and the place to be to say that no one will be so sick that they cannot demand the rest of that list of human rights so of course i think your cause is moral and i think your cause is just i think your cause i think your cause is practical and every speaker you have ever had has told you that absolutely but i'm going to tell you something else i think your cause is viable i think you are going to win in very short order and it's not a pretty picture i'm go for you tonight not going to tell you that it's going to come as a gift and i'm certainly not going to tell you that it's going to come as a result of organizing or hard work that's the lie we tell people the liar we tell people is that if you just keep showing up been you know picking away at it over time maybe you can build up to that wonderful place where you got to do it the organizing is vital because you put something in place for the moment when the economics the social realities and the political realities make the change inevitable and i come to tell you tonight that the change is inevitable and that it is coming much faster than any any people will tell you than than the pundits will tell you than the politicians will tell you now the fact of the matter is that i know this in part because i'm a now i do i don't sit on those t v shows and whenever a question they ask i give my best answer i know this because i actually cover politics for a living and i want to emphasize to you that he how we  let politics come at us so fast that we sort of start to generalize our experience we start to believe that what we're in what this is how it's always been or this is this is where it's been brothers and sisters brothers and sisters i will guarantee you that a year ago not a single person in this room i thought that a serious contender for the democratic nomination for president of the united states would say in every single one of his speeches to now more than seven hundred thousand people at rallies across this country that the winner of the new hampshire primary that the person who tied in the state of iowa and the person or just about pulled it off in the state of nevada today that a viable candidate for the democratic nomination for president of united states would be sang that this nation must have a single payer medicare for all health care system this is it is an unimaginable reality the only thing more unimaginable is it doesn't lead in candidate for the republican nomination the guy who won new hampshire almost won iowa the guy who just sweepingly won south carolina also when he forgets to be a right wing nut says that single payer is the answer to the problems facing the country sorry i don't want to i do not want to rain on the parade of trump patron and i'm not here to tell you that donald trump that there is any great redeeming values in this man but i do w to understand that this donald trump the one thing that like republican debates and in interviews on national television you know he goes crazier and crazier more and three he's in a fight with the pope iphone i mean this guy gets in a fight with everyone here and there's just completely unimaginable and yet the one thing he says well i can't go too crazy on this the fact of the matter is we can't let people die in the streets we're going to have to have some sort of health care plan that covers the poor are and he keeps actually sort of defaulting although he won't say and he keeps running away from it balances around it but as a businessman a guy who actually looks at the books he keeps defaulting toward single pair i'm sorry if the republican i don't particularly like and the democratic kind of impresses me are both saying that single payer ought to be on the agenda that we at least have to discuss it i think i'll just sit back and have a bud light now i believe we have accomplished more than i and this is all the organizer we've done man things are way further along and then best thing of all the single happening right now is that hillary rodham clinton the front runner for the democratic nomination for president keeps attacking single pair keep saying oh we can't do that right that is fabulous now i tell you why that is fabulous it is fabulous because the fact of the matter is if we're having an actual debate about single payer health care we're actually at the level not just of trying to educate people that it exists but we're actually fighting about it and that millions of young people who've been engaged with politics who are showing up at rallies who are not going to doors are actually being introduced to politics with single pair is a central issue with single parents and identifying issue with a as the line that they will not cross if that's where we're at brothers clinton i have a high regard for something i don't want to be mean or cruel and so i'll just say as plainly as i can she's completely wrong she's wrong about single pa and she know she's wrong about it the fact of the matter is she fully recognizes that she's wrong about it this is politics and i like that even better i like it when politicians feel like they've got to play these games right they've got  dance around because the fact of the matter is she's fundamentally wrong it's clear she's wrong she's wrong practically she is wrong politically why is she wrong politically she may be the nominee i am not going to tell you that she isn't here's why she's wrong politically because when she and her supporters attacked bernie sanders and single pair when they what happened what happened was nothing what happened was nothing bernie sanders his poll numbers didn't go down people didn't start leaving his rallies they didn't vote against him in new hampshire they didn't run away from him he didn't fail when she attacked him on that the fact of the matter is there's a lot of evidence that he went up politically when that attack came because the fact of the matter is in america we don't really like the slogan no we can't we actually like the slogan yes we can and the fact of the matter is that that putting this issue into play has proven to be anything but smart politics this is important because you have to go through these stages are friends of work to candidate no single pair doesn't come as a gift doesn't come immediately it doesn't is the he's a preacher from out in western canada who basically told people about mice and it's good to obscure here but dr douglas made a wonderful film called mouse land about how all the mice kept getting eaten by the cats and then they all got together and they overwhelm the cats and they formed a single payer healthcare system that more or less and in fact no matter is it took tommy douglas twenty years right you start in saskatchewan it took twenty years trudeau came along and it's always a treat always in it and but the fact of the matter is that takes time these are hard struggles but when you get into the fight when you're actually debating it when it's on the agenda that's a different politics right there and so i'm think what you're going to say is well thank you mr nichols for come and tell me about the politics that i already know so much about but here's the big deal this is the most important thing i will tell you this isn't happening because of bernie sanders and it isn't happening because of donald trump and it isn't happening because of hillary clinton and it isn't happening even because of p n h p honor your work at a level that you cannot begin to imagine it is happening because everything around us is changing so radically that people recognize without even knowing that we are entering into a new stage economically that will be so transformative and so disruptive that if we don't have a single payer health care system everything else will fall apart and this is why i said this is a dystopian answer to your concerns but it is actually the truth of where we are heading the fact of the matter is that a year ago two years ago at davos in switzerland which is where rich people go to drink bottled water and to ski at davos all the rich people gather every year and they have a great big speech at the start of it by like the richest rich person it's not the smartest tile of knowledge because there's that yes i remember takhar see among the rich but eric schmidt from google got up at davos two years ago and he said you know what the biggest issue in the next thirty years is going to be no jobs the fact of the matter is that we have entered into a reality with digital transformation of our communications as well as the automation of our workplaces that suggests that our future is going to have dramatically less traditional jobs things are going to be fundamentally different and not necessarily to the better there are scholars at oxford and at harvard who have suggested in recent studies that as many up to fifty percent of our existing jobs including many middle class and professional jobs will cease to exist as we know them because of automation we are going to have robotized plants we are going to have robotized services and whether we like it or not that's going to make it a lot harder for a lot of us to find the traditional jobs that we have and the weird thing about this is young people know this they may not have been putting it into words but they grew up in those phones they've lived in those phones if you're a parent you know that they live in that phone and it's very frustrating to you but the fact of the matter is that when they're in there they see the future and the problem is they don't see a future where they get a job where they go to work at nine in the morning and they work till four thirty and they get a summer vacation and they get days off with pay and that they have health care coverage it's not there it's not in that bone the fact of the matter is that we actually are seeing such a rapid transformation of our workplaces and our work lives that we now comfortably talk about a gig economy do you want to get economy is we borrowing a word from jazz and rock n roll right you in music you play a gig right you go out and you do a show and you hope you make enough money that night so you can pay your way to get to the next gig and i think we all know how excited parents are when their child shows up and says i'm decided i'm going to be a jazz musician right because the thing that the parent says is wow i think there's a reasonably good chance that i'm going to be supporting you for a cherry substantial amount of time now you may be the next miles davis the next dizzy gillespie but the fact of the matter is miles davis and dizzy gillespie actually struggled for quite a while and so the the truth of the matter is when we talk about the gig economy we talk about people going to make their living not with one clear job but by driving a little bit over the horrible experiment by doing a little bit of air b n b by doing you know a little bit of contract work here and a little bit of consulting there no matter what kind of degree they have when they're cobbling together a life trying to get enough money to get by they may be able to pay for their car they may be able to pay for that that room that they rent out for air b n b but they are going to have a lot of money left over to pay for a health care mandate and they aren't going to have any employer that's going to provide them with health care the fact of the matter is that the economic and social changes of the next twenty years guarantee and i'm sorry young people they're all sitting there going oh crap now but they guarantee that we are going to give the rising generation very little access to the sort of health care that we have known it just won't come in the way that it did so that's one side of the equation young people eighty five percent new hampshire voted for bernie sanders the guy who's saying he's for single payer but here's the interesting thing those truck packers who go to those trump rallies they're yet much older they bend laid off a couple times they've been retrained a couple times and you know what the wal mart greeter job didn't work out as well as they had hoped and so the fact of the matter is the fact of the matter is the people that are showing up at those trump rallies they too have looked at the future and they don't see a way that they get from the age of forty five to the age of sixty two or sixty five when they can start to look at medicare and so the fact is we have a whole society that is voting right now based on their fear of the future based on their concern about the future now our pundit class our political elites they never say that they don't ever talk about it in that way but the fact of the matter is this is the last election of the past this is the last election of the old days the next election they will talk about this they will talk about the fundamental changes in our work life in our social life in our communities that are going to be forced upon us by digitalize and autumn i added economy that will be as different in the next twenty years as the world was in that period from seven hundred ninety to eight hundred ten when we saw the rise of an industrial revolution and the period that went beyond it and the fact of the matter is it will come much faster we if you know anything about moore's law the theory of how when you get technology gets to a certain place it moves forward exponentially there is in the future will tell you that they believe our technological revolution hit the moore's law pivot point around two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine so the fact of the matter is these changes are going to come very very fast they're going to be overwhelming they're at times going to be very daunting very frightening they will create a large class of unemployed they will create a large class of underemployed americans they will not all be young people trying to get in they will also be middle aged people who have seen the careers that they committed to suddenly automated away this is not a pleasant reality but it doesn't have to be a horrible future doesn't have to be horrible at all the fundamental reality is that if we begin to implement the social reforms that are necessary then a future of gig economy then a future of less work does not have to be less pleasant the fact of the matter is we should work less we should have time for leisure and pleasure and our families and our communities it's a wonderful thing but it doesn't work it doesn't work if we are left paying for the essential skills like if we are left paying for health care and so when i will tell you is just a very simple thing physicians for a national health care program activists students getting engaged in these issues donna with all your great political work all of you folks think a little less about candidates think a little less about political parties because the fact of the matter is whoever the candidates are whatever the political parties are we are coming into a period where the demand of our economic and social life will be so overwhelming that we will begin to talk seriously about developing a single payer health care system and it will not be us folks talking about it in a room on saturday night in seattle it will be the most powerful and wealthy people in this country the only fight that lies ahead of us and they have tell you this very bluntly the fight that lies ahead of us is whether that single payer system will be a welfare program developed to care for the poor or for those who have fallen through the cracks and that it well we will recognize a lot of growing number of people in need and we will say there is no way that a mandates going to work for them there is no way that a employer is going to be there for them so we're going to create this welfare program for them and then our future will be debating how little health care to give them we're going to do that all are are we going to at that moment where the opportunity comes at that moment where the demand is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied will be there to say no the only health care plan that is moral the only health care plan that is practical the only health care plan that will work in the twenty first century is a single payer universal healthcare plan that says everyone is covered everybody n nobody out brothers and sisters i guarantee you i promise you this with my whole heart and all of my knowledge that the future that is coming will put single payer at the center of our debates and if we are ready to make the full demand for single payer it will not be the difficult struggle that has been for so long it will be something that will come fast and it will be come universal and it will be seen as the saving grace dystopian and often difficult future we get through these changes that are taking place if we do a single payer health care reform and if we fully embrace the concept that