February, 16 2023, 12:52pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Thursday February, 16 2023, 12:52pm EDT
Contact:
press@sanders.senate.gov
PREPARED REMARKS: Chairman Sanders Holds HELP Committee Hearing on the Health Care Workforce Crisis in America
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today led a committee hearing titled, “Examining Health Care Workforce Shortages: Where Do We Go From Here?”
Sanders’ opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below and can be watched here:
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will come to order.
Today we are holding a hearing to examine the healthcare workforce challenges that our country faces. I will give an opening statement, followed by Ranking Member Cassidy, and then we will introduce the witnesses.
After the witnesses give their testimony, Senators will each have five minutes to question the witnesses.
Let me begin by thanking Ranking Member Cassidy, all Senators and the panelists for being with us today to discuss this enormously important issue.
It’s no secret that our country faces many health care crises. Despite spending almost twice as much per capita as almost any other major country on healthcare – nearly $13,000 for every man, woman and child – 85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured, over 500,000 Americans go bankrupt each year because of medically related debt, and we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
It is my expectation that over the next many months our committee will address all of these healthcare issues and more.
But today, we’re going to focus on another major healthcare crisis and that is, despite all of our healthcare spending, we don’t have enough doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, dentists, dental hygienists, pharmacists, mental health providers, and other medical professionals.
And what is the impact of those health provider shortages? It means that nearly 100 million of our people live in a primary care desert where they are unable to gain timely access to a doctor when they need it. It means that nearly 70 million live in a dental care desert, unable to get dental care while teeth are rotting in their mouths. And it means that some 158 million Americans – nearly half the population – live in a mental health care desert at a time when this country is facing a major crisis in mental health.
Simply put, it means that a significant percentage of our population live in places where they cannot access the healthcare they desperately need.
In my view, this reality is a contributing factor to the declining life expectancy we are seeing in many parts of our country, and the fact that our overall life expectancy is significantly lower than many other industrialized countries. Life expectancy is not simply a factor of healthcare access, but it is an important factor. If people do not get to a doctor when they should, if they cannot afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe they will die earlier than they should and suffer unnecessary, debilitating pain.
And here is a point that you are going to hear me make very often. And that is not only does the lack of medical professionals in many parts of the country lead to increased human suffering and unnecessary death, it is incredibly wasteful from a financial perspective. If people cannot access a primary care doctor, they may end up in an emergency room which is the most expensive form of primary healthcare. And if their illnesses continue to go untreated, they may end up in a hospital and could run up bills of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Study after study shows that disease prevention saves money. If people are able to access care when they need it; if there are enough medical professionals to provide that care in every part of this country, our healthcare costs will go down.
A shortage of healthcare personnel was a problem before the pandemic and now it has gotten worse. Health care jobs have gotten more challenging and, in some cases, more dangerous. Many thousands of health care workers have died from COVID taking care of the American people, and many more have become sick.
According to the best estimates, over the next decade, our country faces a shortage of over 120,000 doctors – including a huge shortage of primary care doctors.
Over the next two years, it is estimated that we will need up to 450,000 more nurses.
Today, it is estimated that we need about 100,000 more dentists – right now.
And in America today, there is a massive shortage – many, many hundreds of thousands – of mental health service providers – psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, addiction specialists and many more.
In addition to our overall crisis in healthcare providers that problem is especially acute in minority communities. We desperately need more African American, Latino, and Native American healthcare personnel who are way under-represented in the healthcare profession.
How we address these crises is the subject of today’s hearing and of a lot more future discussions. But talk and hearings are not good enough. The American people want this committee to produce some serious legislation that address these crises, and that is exactly what we must do. Let me say a few words on what I believe to be some of the obvious steps forwards as we grapple with this issue.
First, it is a no brainer to understand that, when over 10,000 medical school graduates are unable to find residency slots every year, we must significantly expand and improve the Graduate Medical Education program. Further, and in the jurisdiction of this committee, we must also greatly expand the Teaching Health Center program which will allow us to grow significantly the number of primary care physicians and nurses we desperately need.
At a time when young people are graduating from medical school, dental school, and nursing school, deeply in debt – sometimes to the tune of $400,000 or $500,000 – it is pretty obvious that those graduates are not going to practice in under-served areas where they will earn less money than those who practice in more affluent communities. That is why we must substantially increase student loan debt forgiveness and scholarships that the National Health Service Corps program provides. We have expanded that program in recent years, for doctors, nurses, dentists and mental health providers, but much more needs to be done.
Further, in terms of nursing, despite a major nursing shortage, we have the absurd situation that in many parts of this country, including Vermont, nursing schools are rejecting applicants because they don’t have the nurse educators and facilities they need.
In Vermont, as an example, nurse educators earn about $65,000 a year – nearly half of what nurses with similar degrees earn working in a hospital. We need to make sure that nursing schools throughout the country have the staffing and facilities to educate the number of new nurses that we will need. In my view, that means we also need to substantially expand and reform, the Nurse Corps and the Nurse Faculty Loan Program, among many other programs.
And let’s be clear – the issues we are talking about today are just part of the problem. Our committee must also grapple with broader health care workforce challenges. Pharmacies across the country are having trouble hiring pharmacists. We don’t have enough home healthcare workers. We don’t have enough nursing home staff, etc., etc.
Further, this crisis also extends to emergency medical services (EMS) and our first responders. These heroic workers are often the first people there during someone’s most difficult moments, and often are the difference between life and death. And yet, in rural parts of Vermont and throughout this country, EMS workers are often volunteers or underpaid professionals.
I now recognize Ranking Member Cassidy for his opening remarks.
LATEST NEWS
US Lawmakers Urged to Follow Merkley and Van Hollen's Lead After Senators Denied Access to Gaza
CAIR said that they "have taken a bold and necessary step by confronting the Israeli-manufactured and US-backed humanitarian calamity in Gaza head-on. Their mission must not stand alone."
Aug 31, 2025
The largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States is calling on US lawmakers to follow in the footsteps of Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, who on Saturday shared a video about their unsuccessful attempts to visit—or even just fly over—the Gaza Strip during Israel's ongoing assault.
"Sens. Van Hollen and Merkley have taken a bold and necessary step by confronting the Israeli-manufactured and US-backed humanitarian calamity in Gaza head-on," the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement late Saturday. "Their mission must not stand alone."
"Israel's barring them entry to Gaza underscores the urgency of taking decisive steps to end its rampage of death, violence, and destruction," CAIR continued. "Members of Congress must utilize every tool—diplomatic, legal, and legislative—to ensure that our nation's values and laws demand an end to civilian suffering. The crisis in Gaza is not abstract—it is a matter of life and death. We call on our representatives to act urgently and courageously."
Merkley (D-Ore.) and Van Hollen (D-Md.) documented their Middle East trip on social media, sharing updates from a United Nations World Food Program site in Israel; Kfar Aza, a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023; the Kerem Shalom border crossing; the illegally occupied West Bank, where Palestinians face violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers; and a Jordanian air force base.
In the air force base video, Merkley and Van Hollen—both members of the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations committees—talk about their efforts to witness firsthand the sweeping destruction and famine in Gaza at the hands of Israeli forces armed and otherwise supported by the US government.
Both men have repeatedly backed Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) resolutions—introduced during both the Biden and Trump administrations—that would prevent the sale of certain offensive American weaponry to Israel, as have a growing number of Senate Democrats. The most recent vote was last month, and a majority of the chamber's Democratic caucus voted in favor.
In addition to reiterating their calls for a ceasefire and the return of remaining hostages that Palestinian militants took from Israel in 2023, in Saturday's clip, the senators discuss Jordanian airdrops—as Israel has limited the flow of food and other essentials—and stressed that, as Van Hollen puts it, "we need to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza."
"People are starving, and anybody who tells you that people are not starving in Gaza is lying to you," he continues. "And it's outrageous that the United States of America, at the UN, was the country that voted no on a resolution saying that we need to end the manmade starvation in Gaza. Anyone who denies that is lying to you."
In a separate video, Merkley addresses the dishonesty they have encountered during their trip. At the Kerem Shalom crossing, they attended a briefing that Merkley says "was designed to tell us everything that we would like to hear about the best organized process for getting aid into Gaza."
"No mention of any obstructions or frustrations," he notes. "Unfortunately, it didn't reflect reality at all. And that makes it just extremely difficult to listen to what essentially amounted to pure propaganda."
At the crossing, they met with representatives from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private entity now responsible for distributing food aid in the strip. Israeli soldiers have killed or wounded thousands of Palestinians around the four GHF sites, which have been described as "death traps."
In a Friday video, Van Hollen says that he and Merkley "made it clear" to GHF "that the idea of having only four sites open, mostly in the southern part of Gaza—and by the way, only three are open today—that that is just a way to use food for population control purposes."
"And so, we had a disagreement with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation folks," he adds. "But our goal here today is to be witness to what the system is, and to make sure that we can try to fix what is clearly a broken system for everybody, because there are people in Gaza who are desperately hungry and starving."
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that 10 more people had died of starvation, plus 15 Palestinians were killed and over 206 others were injured by Israeli fire while trying to get humanitarian aid. The agency puts the overall death toll since October 2023 at 63,371, though experts believe the true figure is far higher. At least 159,835 Palestinians have been wounded.
Israel's assault on Gaza has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces accusations that he is dragging out the war in an effort to avoid a corruption trial in Israel.
As Trump Targets Chicago, Mayor Fights His 'Tyranny' With Executive Order
"We will protect our Constitution, we will protect our city, and we will protect our people," Mayor Brandon Johnson declared. "We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want to see families ripped apart."
Aug 30, 2025
Continuing the battle against US President Donald Trump's "erratic and petulant behavior," Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Saturday signed an executive order responding to the Republican's threats to deploy federal immigration agents and potentially National Guard and active-duty troops to Illinois' biggest city.
Just before signing the order, Johnson told journalists that he would have preferred to work with City Council to pass legislation, "but unfortunately we do not have the luxury of time," given "credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our city sees some type of militarized activity by the federal government."
Asked about which specific reports he was referring to, the mayor just said that the deployment could occur as soon as Friday, so he had to take "immediate, drastic action to protect our people from federal overreach."
"We will protect our Constitution, we will protect our city, and we will protect our people," he declared. "We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want to see families ripped apart. We do not want grandmothers thrown into the back of unmarked vans. We don't want to see homeless Chicagoans harassed or disappeared by federal agents. We don't want to see Chicagoans arrested for sitting on their porch. That's not who we are as a city, and that's not who we are as a nation."
A spokesperson for the suburban Naval Station Great Lakes confirmed to Military Times earlier this week that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contacted the base about possibly using it for immigration enforcement activities.
The Chicago Sun-Times obtained an email in which the station's commanding officer, Navy Cpt. Stephen Yargosz, told his leadership team: "These operations are similar to what occurred in Los Angeles earlier this summer. Same DHS team."
According to the newspaper, Yargosz added in his Monday email that "this morning I received a call that there is the potential also to support National Guard units. Not many details on this right now. Mainly a lot of concerns and questions."
In addition to targeting California's largest city, Trump has recently federalized Washington, DC's police force and deployed the National Guard there—and he has threatened to similarly target other Democrat-led cities, despite their falling crime rates.
As the Sun-Times reported Saturday:
White House officials have distinctly said the operation in Chicago would mirror Los Angeles more than DC, which saw thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines—some of whom are stationed there through November—activated to quell protests against immigration raids.
"If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the president, their communities would be much safer," wrote White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. "[Democrats] should listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser who recently celebrated the Trump administration's success in driving down violent crime in Washington, DC."
Johnson's order against Trump's "tyranny" states that the mayor demands the president "and any agents acting under his authority stand down from any attempts to deploy the US armed forces—including the National Guard—in Chicago."
"The city will pursue all available legal and legislative avenues to counter coordinated efforts from the federal government that violate the rights of the city and its residents, including the constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest, and the right to due process," the document warns.
The order also establishes the Protecting Chicago Initiative, which will include making information regarding residents' rights and federal government action available; coordinating efforts to identify and address community needs; and regularly submitting public records requests to DHS, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection.
The document states that the Chicago Police Department "shall remain a locally controlled law enforcement agency" under the authority of the city and the mayor, no CPD personnel shall participate in civil immigration enforcement, and all officers, "when engaged in any law enforcement, crowd management, or public safety operations, will wear department-authorized uniforms."
It further says that "CPD officers are prohibited from intentionally disguising or concealing their identities from the public by wearing any mask, covering, or disguise while performing their official duties," and "all other law enforcement officers, including federal agents, as well as members of the military operating in Chicago, are urged to adhere to these requirements to protect public safety and promote accountability."
Under Trump, federal immigration officials have often donned masks—which has led to people targeted for arrest questioning whether they are encountering real agents, as well as criminals impersonating agents.
During Saturday's signing event, Johnson said that his office has communicated with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and the state's congressional delegation, and "we are in complete alignment."
The mayor's move won praise from the Chicago Teachers Union, which said in a statement that CTU "stands in firm opposition to the president's threat to occupy our city with federal forces and terrorize our communities. As educators working and living in every one of Chicago's 77 neighborhoods, we know that safety does not come from federal forces invading our city. Real safety comes from the types of community investments that Mayor Johnson has made into public health, public education, summer youth jobs, affordable housing, small business development, and mental health care."
Noting Trump's recent attacks on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the union said that "if Trump wants to spend a million dollars a day in Chicago, he can send it for crossing guards to help our children move safely across this city, for Safe Passage to make sure that our children have a friendly face to see on their journey back and forth to home, for SNAP benefits to make sure our children have the nutrition they need to thrive and flourish, for special education and dual language supports for our students, and for healthcare so their families can afford the medicine and care they need."
"The CTU applauds Mayor Johnson for taking steps to protect the rights of Chicagoans, and to not be conscripted into Trump's threatened occupation of our city," the union continued. "We stand in solidarity with all of our fellow Chicagoans, as we say no to occupation and demand that our federal tax dollars be used to provide the services our communities actually need: healthcare, SNAP, and fully funded schools to our communities, not to send federal troops to terrorize them."
"This is why we will join tens of thousands of Chicagoans on Monday at 11:00 am, for the Workers Over Billionaires march and rally," the CTU added. "This Labor Day, we will be in the streets of our city, marching peacefully, to say NO to Trump, his occupation, and the billionaire takeover of our country."
Israeli Airstrike Kills Houthi Prime Minister in Yemen's Capital
As one Houthi leader pledged that "we shall take vengeance," Israel's defense minister said that "this is just the beginning."
Aug 30, 2025
Yemen's Houthis confirmed Saturday that an Israeli airstrike Thursday in the country's capital, Sanaa, killed "several" government officials, including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi.
The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, have targeted Israel and ships in the Red Sea over the US-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which has been increasingly denounced as genocide. Israel and the United States—under both the Biden and Trump administrations—have responded to the Houthis' Red Sea actions by bombing Yemen, where an ongoing civil war began in 2014.
As The Associated Press reported Saturday:
Thursday's Israeli strike took place as the rebel-owned television station was broadcasting a speech by Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the secretive leader of the rebel group in which he was sharing updates on the latest Gaza developments and vowing retaliation against Israel. Senior Houthi officials used to gather to watch al-Houthi's prerecorded speeches.
Al-Rahawi wasn't part of the inner circle around Abdul Malik al-Houthi that runs the military and strategic affairs of the group. His government, like the previous ones, was tasked with running the day-to-day civilian affairs in Sanaa and other Houthi-held areas.
Although the full list of Houthi officials killed in the strike has not been released, Reuters reported that unnamed sources confirmed that "the energy, foreign, and information ministers were among those killed."
The news agency also noted that while Al-Rahawi became prime minister around a year ago, "the de facto leader of the government was his deputy, Mohamed Moftah, who was assigned on Saturday to carry out the prime minister's duties."
In a Saturday statement, the Houthi government affirmed that it would continue to "fulfill its role" and "institutions will continue to provide their services to the steadfast, patient, struggling Yemeni people. It will not be affected, no matter the extent of the calamity... and the blood of the great martyrs will be fuel and motivation to continue on the same path."
"We affirm to our great Yemeni people, to the oppressed Palestinian people, to all the sons of our nation, and to all free people in the world, that we continue our authentic stance in supporting and aiding the people of Gaza, and in building our armed forces and developing their capabilities to face all challenges and dangers, just as our great Yemeni people are present in all fields and arenas with all determination, will, and faith," the government added, according to a translation from Drop Site News.
Both US President Donald Trump's administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive of the International Criminal Court for his country's conduct in Gaza—consider the Houthis a terrorist organization.
The Thursday strike came nearly a week after the Israel Defense Forces said that it intercepted multiple ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis, and at least one contained cluster munitions. Citing the IDF and Hebrew media, The Times of Israel reported Saturday that a missile fired by the Houthis overnight "fell short" of Israel, instead falling in Saudi Arabia.
The newspaper also shared Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz's response to the Houthis confirming Al-Rahawi's assassination. He said that "two days ago, we dealt an unprecedented crushing blow to the senior officials in the military-political leadership of the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, in a bold and brilliant action by the IDF."
"The destiny of Yemen is the destiny of Tehran—and this is just the beginning," Katz continued. "The Houthis will learn the hard way that whoever threatens and harms Israel will be harmed sevenfold—and they will not determine when this ends."
Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera, Mahdi al-Mashat, a Yemeni politician and military officer who serves as the chairman of the Supreme Political Council of the Houthis, said in a video message that "we shall take vengeance, and we shall forge from the depths of wounds a victory."
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