Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Monday that President Trump could “literally collapse” the American health care system as a partisan battle rages amid the government shutdown.

“I don’t mean to be overly repetitive, we have a broken health care system, everybody knows that. And Trump is not wrong, when he says the system is not working very well. But he is making it far worse,” Sanders told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source.”

“And honestly, as the former chair of the Health Committee, I worry very, very much that he could literally collapse the entire system,” he continued. “We don’t have enough doctors right now. Who in the world is going to want to become a doctor in the midst of all of this?”

When reached for comment, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email that Trump’s “position is clear: reopen the government with the clean, bipartisan CR that Democrats supported just 6 months ago and 13 times under Joe Biden and then we can have all the important policy discussions needed.”

On Monday, President Trump urged Democrats to reopen the government, saying he will only talk about a potential deal on extending health care tax credits once they back the Republican funding proposal.

“I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open. In fact, they should open our Government tonight!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

The Senate on Monday let the government shutdown hit the one-week mark after Democrats blocked the GOP’s “clean” stopgap funding bill from advancing for a fifth time. The upper chamber voted 52-42 on the House-passed bill, which required 60 votes to advance and would have funded the government at spending levels from the Biden presidency until later this fall.

The Senate also voted along party lines in rejecting a Democratic stopgap bill that would attach several health care provisions to an extension of government funding.

Updated at 4:29 p.m.

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