With health care being the primary issue that helped Democrats retake the majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, it’s not the least bit surprising to see newly elected Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) posting so much about the issue on Twitter lately.
Her tweets were inspired specifically by the stark differences she found between the health care plans she was offered as an incoming member of Congress and what was available to her in her previous job waiting tables in a restaurant.
In my on-boarding to Congress, I get to pick my insurance plan.
As a waitress, I had to pay more than TWICE what I’d pay as a member of Congress.
It’s frustrating that Congressmembers would deny other people affordability that they themselves enjoy. Time for #MedicareForAll.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 1, 2018
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People don’t want overly complicated choice between pricey, low-quality plans.
We want an affordable solution that covers our needs, like the rest of the modern world.
Medicare for All:
– Single-payer system
– Covers physical, mental, & dental care
– 0 due *at point of service*— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 2, 2018
Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned call for an American health insurance system that measures up to those offered in the more culturally-advanced nations of the world, not to mention that of her colleagues in Congress, resulted in typical paranoid replies from right-wing opponents of what they derisively label “socialized medicine.”
One such reply came from Fox News contributor Jim Hanson who invoked the perennial Republican shibboleth of government death panels that they claim would be empowered to decide who lives and dies through the rationing of health care under a government-controlled health care system.
Things will be much simpler when our Democrat Socialist overlords simply tell us who will live and who will die#DeathPanels rock https://t.co/4Sz740cd6h
— Jim Hanson (@Uncle_Jimbo) December 2, 2018
Congresswoman Octavio-Cortez could not leave that propagandistic fable unanswered without pointing out the obvious fact that Americans are already subject to just this sort of health care rationing by the private, for-profit health insurance companies that act as death panels for millions of their subscribers in a system where unaccountable, unelected corporate bureaucrats determine who will get medical treatment based on monetary resources rather than need.
Actually, we have for-profit “death panels” now: they are companies + boards saying you’re on your own bc they won’t cover a critical procedure or medicine.
Maybe if the GOP stopped hiding behind this “socialist” rock they love to throw, they’d actually engage on-issue for once. https://t.co/4P2TrflkFX
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 2, 2018
Beyond calling out Hanson for his reliance on outmoded tropes of socialist fear-mongering, the country’s youngest congressional representative-elect also pointed out the horrifying misplacement of national priorities by comparing the cost of a universal “Medicare-for-all” plan with the amount of money that the Pentagon simply couldn’t account for in its recently completed, and scandalously failed, audit.
$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.”
$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T.
That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.
And that’s before our premiums. https://t.co/soT6GSmDSG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 2, 2018
Forget the shadow villains of “death panels” and “socialized medicine” that Republicans keep trying to frighten you with. Medicare is socialized medicine, and it works just fine in covering medical care for our nations older citizens. There’s no reason it won’t work for everyone else and ensure that no Americans die simply because they are too poor to afford proper care, especially if we divert money wasted in the military-industrial complex to pay for it.
Let’s hope that with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and other newly elected progressive Democrats joining the House of Representatives in January, the new Congress will be able to make significant progress in enacting the kind of health care that we all deserve and have shown by the midterm election results that the majority of us want.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
