WASHINGTON: U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, pushing an ambitious"Medicare for All" health plan that has split Democratic White House contenders, will urge his rivals on Wednesday to reject campaign donations from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
"If we are going to break the stranglehold of corporate interests over the healthcare needs of the American people, we have got to confront a Washington culture that has let this go on for far too long," Sanders will say. The proposal has come under fire from some of his Democratic rivals led by former Vice President Joe Biden, who has called it an unrealistic and costly threat to former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law known as Obamacare.The Sanders Medicare for All proposal has become the biggest source of division in the Democratic battle to pick a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in 2020.