RACHEL MADDOW: Joining us now is Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. He is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is in the midst of all this, trying to bring about the most important domestic policy legislation in half a century.

Senator Sanders, thanks very much for coming back on the show.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: Good to be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW: The new chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, said yesterday that a health care bill with a public option would be passed by Congress by Christmas. I have to ask you if you share his optimism.

SANDERS: Well, I‘m going to do everything I can to make sure that happens. Clearly, we have a health care system which is disintegrating in this country. So many people uninsured, underinsured, costs are soaring.

And what the public option is about is not only giving the people a choice about whether they want a private insurance program or they want a Medicare-type program. It also is a mechanism for cost containment so that the private insurance companies simply cannot continue to raise rates as high as they want. They‘re going to have to compete with the Medicare-type program.

MADDOW: One of the reasons I wanted to highlight this satirical counter-protest to the 9/12 folks this weekend was because of that issue of the folks who are profiting from the system being broken the way it is now. And it‘s-one of those things that maybe hard to articulate at a level of detail that can really compete with the hollering that we‘re hearing against health care reform on the right.

But you‘ve talked really specifically about the financial pressure that health care industry lobbyists are putting on members of Congress every day-the amount of money they‘re spending to influence this debate. Should we just expect that to increase further as the final bill nears debate on the Senate floor?

SANDERS: Absolutely. Look, we are spending close to $3 trillion a year on health care. The private insurance companies make huge profits. Their CEOs receive millions and millions of dollars in compensation packages. And they‘re going to fight tooth-and-nail to do anything that affects their profits.

But, Rachel, one of the thing that disturbs me very much about this whole process is, you know, we‘re seeing a lot of anger out there and the truth is that people have a right to be angry. The fact that Wall Street has plunged this country into such a deep recession so that we‘re looking today at 17 percent of the American work force which is either unemployed or underemployed. People are angry and they‘ve got a right to be angry.

And what disturbs me very much is that you see many of these right-wing folks, they‘re not angry at the insurance companies that are ripping us off. They‘re not angry at the drug companies which are charging us the highest rates in the industrialized world. They‘re not angry at the Wall Street guys who made hundreds of millions of dollars and then through their greed and illegal behavior caused this deep recession.

What the Republicans have managed to do is to turn that anger against what? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the attempt to try to make sure that every person in this country has health care as a right. That‘s a pretty sad state of affairs. So, I think we have to get a handle on that and say to people, "You got to be-you have a right to be angry. You should be angry. But take your anger out against the people who have caused the economic distress of this country is now experiencing."

MADDOW: In terms of political pragmatism though, I mean, you‘ve served in Washington a long time. You‘ve shuffled a lot of legislation through the most-you know a lot about the most arcane details of congressional rules. I have to ask you, if we‘re looking at the substantive possibilities here for health reform, are you actually a little bit comforted by the fact the opposition to it is so-it‘s so nonspecific, it‘s so not on topic?

This marks-this weekend was maybe about health reform more than it was about anything else. But it was totally incoherent and emotional. And I wonder if that actually means the prospects for reform are better than they would be if the opposition was more articulate.

SANDERS: Rachel, I think you‘re right. This demonstration and a lot of the right wing extremism that we‘re seeing frankly has nothing to do with health care. It is people who are hurting. They‘re angry and their anger is coming out against the government. I find it quite interesting that now there are concerns about the very serious national debt that we have, but they weren‘t concern about the tax breaks that went to billionaires.

So, it is kind of a broad anger, which is being focused against the government, rather than against the very powerful private special interests which have caused so many serious problems in this country. But I agree with you. The fact that they really are not specific, and they‘re just taking out their anger-Obama is not born in America, Obama is a communist, Obama is a Nazi, and Obama shouldn‘t be allowed to talk to school children-I think in many ways, that makes our job a little bit easier.

MADDOW: Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont-thanks very much for your time tonight, sir.

SANDERS: Thank you.