WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP), today delivered an opening statement at the committee’s hearing on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Sanders’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below and can be watched here.

Thank you, Senator Cassidy. And Mr. Kennedy, thank you for being with us.

I will discuss later the issue of vaccines, which Senator Cassidy raised, and is of concern I think for all of us. But before I go there, I wanted to congratulate you for the phrase “Make America Healthy Again.” I think that is a cry that all of us – a goal that all of us share – because, as you have indicated, we are a very unhealthy society.

We are the richest country in the history of the world, but we rank far below every other major country in terms of our life expectancy. That’s outrageous. To me, equally outrageous is that, if you are working class in this country, you are going to live six or seven years shorter than if you are rich. In America today, 68,000 people die every year because they can’t afford to get to a doctor.

Unbelievably, in this country, hundreds of thousands of people deal with cancer, struggling for their lives. You know what happens to them? They go bankrupt. They deplete their life’s savings.

In other words, when we talk about making America healthy, we’ve got to talk about our broken, corrupt health care system.

Your uncle, President Kennedy, and your father, Bobby Kennedy, a great senator from New York, both did the right thing. They said that health care is a human right. I’m not sure how we can move to making America healthy again unless we have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and guarantee health care to all people. I’ll be asking you a question about that.

Lowering the cost of prescription drugs. How do you make America healthy again if one out of four people in this country cannot afford the price of prescription drugs, which is far higher in America than any other country on Earth?

Under President Biden, we made some progress and this committee played an active role in having Medicare begin, for the first time, negotiating the price of prescription drugs. And I’m going to ask you today whether or not President Trump will follow what we accomplished here.

We are the only major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Mr. Kennedy, there are women today who are having babies and are forced to return to work in a week or two because they have no guaranteed paid family and medical leave. How do you have a healthy country when Americans get fired because they stay home taking care of their sick kids? That’s not making America healthy again.

If you are working 50 to 60 hours a week making 13, 14 bucks an hour, can you be healthy? Will you join those of us who think that, in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, people that work 40 hours a week should not live in poverty? We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

Lastly, President Trump believes that climate change is a hoax. I happen to believe, most Americans believe and virtually the entire scientific community believes that it is an existential threat to this planet. I don’t know how you are going to make America healthy again or keep the world healthy when you have massive heat waves, droughts, floods and extreme weather disturbances. That’s not keeping America healthy. Now, that is not within the jurisdiction of HHS, but I surely hope that you will, if confirmed, demand that President Trump change his position and work with those of us who are trying to transform our energy system and keep America healthy by addressing the crisis of climate change.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.