10:45 p.m. ET, August 18, 2020
Activist Ady Barkan: Put a bill on Biden’s desk "that guarantees us all the health care we deserve"
From CNN's Gregory Krieg
Activist Ady Barkan.
Democratic National Convention
Activist Ady Barkan, who was diagnosed with ALS after the 2016 election, conducted a series of interviews with the Democratic candidates before the primaries.
He eventually endorsed Elizabeth Warren, then Bernie Sanders after she dropped out of the race. Joe Biden was not among the group who visited him for the taped conversations.
But on Tuesday night, Barkan – who has since spoken with the former vice president and endorsed him – said, “We must elect Joe Biden.”
Barkan’s remarks, which were voiced by a computer that tracks his eye movements, focused on his own family, including a poignant message to his young children, and the fight to guarantee health care to every American. Biden has never bought in to “Medicare for All,” so Barkan included a nudge to his fellow advocates.
“Each of us must be a hero for our communities, for our country, and then, with a compassionate and intelligent president, we must act together and put on his desk a bill that guarantees us all the health care we deserve,” Barkan said.
In describing his painful, debilitating struggle against a “mysterious illness,” Barkan said that he, like so many others, had “experienced the ways our health care system is fundamentally broken: enormous costs, denied claims, dehumanizing treatment when we are most in need.”
Barkan connected his experience to the suffering that has accompanied the coronavirus pandemic, which he said laid bare the cruelest elements of a broken system.
“Today we are witnessing the tragic consequences of our failing health care system,” Barkan said. “In the midst of a pandemic, nearly 100 million Americans do not have sufficient health insurance.”
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