AOC Totally Ignores 58% of Americans In Claiming No One Would Miss Private Insurance
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made the baseless claim on Wednesday that nobody would be “heartbroken” to lose their private health insurance in favor of Medicare for All, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
Bloomberg political reporter Sahil Kapur first reported on the freshman lawmaker’s comments.
“@AOC, asked about warnings from Joe Biden on Medicare for All, says nobody is ‘heartbroken’ at the idea of losing private insurance,” Kapur tweeted.
.@AOC, asked about warnings from Joe Biden on Medicare for All, says nobody is “heartbroken” at the idea of losing private insurance.
“People like their health care, they like their doctor,” she says. “But I’d be interested in what the public polling on Aetna would look like.”
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 17, 2019
A Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation poll found Ocasio-Cortez’s claim to be inaccurate.
The poll showed that the majority of Americans would not support Medicare for All if it meant losing private health insurance.
Though 56% of respondents initially supported Medicare for All, when the same group of respondents were told that the plan would eliminate private insurance, 58% were against the proposal.
The poll also found that most voters would prefer incremental changes to the current health care system, including Medicare buy-in plans for people between the ages of 50 and 64.
On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden released his health care plan, which builds on changes made during the Obama administration.
Biden’s proposal would allow Americans to buy into a public health plan similar to Medicare but would not eliminate private plans.
The former VP’s plan aligns with the Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which showed that 51 percent of Democrats would prefer to see politicians focus their efforts on improving the Affordable Care Act.
This week, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said that expanding Medicare coverage to every American would cost as much as $40 trillion over the course of a decade.
Sanders admitted that, in order to pay for the program, he would raise taxes for the middle class.
The life-long socialist also said “there will be pain” during the transition to single-payer health care.
Several Democratic presidential hopefuls have joined Sanders in advocating for Medicare for All.
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