9 September 2019 - The Vermont senator has staked his presidential campaign, and much of his political legacy, on transforming health care in America. His mother’s illness, and a trip he made to study the Canadian system, help explain why.

In July 1987, Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vt., arrived in Ottawa convinced he was about to see the future of health care.

Years earlier, as his mother’s health declined and his family struggled to pay for medical treatment, he was spending more time attending to her than in classes at Brooklyn College, suffering through what his brother called “a wrecked year’’ leading to her death. Over time, he had come to believe that the American health care system was flawed and inherently unfair. In Canada, he wanted to observe firsthand the government-backed, universal model that he strongly suspected was better.

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