His first year in Congress, Bernie Sanders introduced HR 2530, a single-payer national health care system.

“I am proud to inform you that I recently introduced legislation in the Congress that would establish a Canadian style health care system in this country. My bill, HR 2530, would guarantee health care to every American without out-of-pocket expense. It will mean that, when illness strikes, every American can go to a doctor or enter a hospital without pulling out a wallet or checkbook or reading the fine print on an insurance policy. Let me tell you why I introduced this legislation.

Everywhere I go in Vermont, I hear the same message: The present health care system is failing. People tell me this at town meetings and union halls and senior citizen centers. Working people and small businesspeople, people who are ill and the doctors who treat them, all say the same thing. “Bernie, you’ve got to get the people in Washington to do something about our healthcare system. It just isn’t working.”^[1]

H.R. 2530 would enable states to adopt a single-payer, comprehensive and universal health care plan that would guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child without out-of-pocket expenses. H.R. 2530 would provide the financial help and legal authority to those states which are willing to take the lead in a creating single-payer system.