Bernie Sanders gave me, my wife, and many others a reason to continue onward in our medical profession. The prospect of change and liberation from a predatory system was the hope that kept us going.

Now, that hope is gone.

1 / 15

I've spent the entirety of my career as an emergency physician, working at hospitals in impoverished communities that has a high turnover rate and often substandard care. I wanted to be a champion for those underserved patients.

2 / 15

Most people, due in part to how Hollywood portrays the medical profession, tend to perceive doctors and nurses as God-like creatures who are well compensated and unconstrained by bureaucracy. We're not the heroes that you see on television.

3 / 15

Doing the right thing for our patients is not often within our control, and more often than not, it can cause us to lose our jobs. We don't practice medicine anymore; we practice a perverse form of capitalistic health services.

4 / 15

The practice of medicine in America is nothing more than an obfuscated financial transaction between for-profit clinics & hospitals and insurance companies. However, insurance companies now own many of these hospitals and practices.

5 / 15

Few doctors enjoy the freedom that once pervaded across the field of medicine, where we were able to focus only on the patient. Today, we are just cogs in a machine that forces us into compliance. It's grueling and soul-killing.

6 / 15

More than 30% of physicians are planning to leave medicine within the next ten years, more than half of whom are under the age of fifty. With fewer people entering the medical profession, physician shortages will be a significant health crisis.

7 / 15

I had resigned my position at one emergency one about a year ago in protest of nurses forced into retiring early. Compelled to help fight the COVID pandemic, I went back to work last week. Following Bernie's exit, today was my last day.

8 / 15

It's not a childish temper tantrum. I can't continue to work within a system where medical mistakes are becoming more prevalent, and more patients are left to suffer and die because they lack access or can't afford the care they need and deserve.

9 / 15

I'm tired, as are most, of spending more time battling with insurance companies, hospital administrators, and other unnecessary intermediaries. It's not profitable to even give us the things we need to do our job safely.

10 / 15

Emergency rooms are in dire lack of lifesaving drugs and equipment. Fewer physicians and nurses are working per shift than what is needed. Saving your life is more often the exception than the rule, or so it seems.

11 / 15

For those working in the medical profession, we see the system failing every single day, and we know it's on the verge of collapse. What we need is a single-payer system that eliminates these profiteering intermediaries. Bernie was the only one fighting for that.

12 / 15

I am feeling let down and betrayed by my fellow Democrats who say they care about health care and yet refuse to listen to those of us who know what we need. Joe Biden is the worse person, aside from Trump, on health care.

13 / 15

While you might think you'll fare better under a Biden presidency than Trump, you're about to lose health care, because the system is unsustainable. There won't be enough doctors or nurses available to provide care to even those who can afford it.

14 / 15

All the Democratic candidates and congressional representatives know this, and have for some time, but they don't care. Americans have no idea the harm they've done themselves in both parties.

15 / 15