Eight Senate Democrats made a choice on the shutdown, and Bernie Sanders is furious about what comes next

Sen. Bernie Sanders went after his fellow Democrats after eight of them voted to move forward with a bill to reopen the government. The problem, according to Sanders, is that the bill doesn’t include money to help people pay for health insurance. The Vermont senator, who works with Democrats even though he’s technically an independent, posted on X to share his anger about what happened.

This was a big change from how Democrats had been handling things. Before Sunday, only three Senate Democrats had voted yes on a Republican plan to fund the government. According to The Hill, most Democrats said no because they wanted the bill to include help for people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. That help is going to run out at the end of the year, and without it, millions of people will have to pay a lot more for their insurance.

But on Sunday night, five more Democrats decided to join those three and vote yes on the bill that passed the House. Sanders was clearly upset about this and talked about what it means for regular Americans. “To my mind, this was a very, very bad vote,” Sanders said in the video he posted.

This isn’t just about politics anymore

Sanders broke down what this vote will actually do to people across the country. He said more than 20 million Americans will see their health insurance costs go way up.

“What it does, first of all, is it raises health care premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, in some cases, tripling or quadrupling,” Sanders said. “People can’t afford that when we are already paying the highest prices of the world for health care.”

There’s another big problem too, according to Sanders. He said the vote opens the door for 15 million people to lose their health coverage completely through Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. That’s a huge number of people who could end up without any way to see a doctor or get medicine.

What really bothered Sanders was when this happened. Just a few days before, on Tuesday, Democrats won big in elections across the country. Sanders thought those wins showed that people wanted Democrats to fight back and not give in.

“As everybody knows, just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country, and what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working-class people, to his authoritarianism,” Sanders said. The tension around Senate procedures and Trump’s influence has continued to shape legislative battles in recent weeks.

Even though Sanders was let down by what happened, he said he’s not giving up. He wants to keep fighting to make sure people don’t lose their health care and to push for a system where everyone in America has coverage.

“So we’ve got to go forward, do the best that we can to try to protect working-class people, to make sure that the United States not only does not throw people off of health care, but ends the absurdity of being the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people,” he said. The clash over health care comes as Trump has been vocal about various political opponents in recent statements.