Another day, another question flubbed by Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
While she boasts an economists degree, when she speaks it’s clear why she was never employed in the field (and was a bartender prior to her entrance into politics). She’s flubbed a handful of questions on how she’ll pay for the “Santa Claus” programs she’s promising, including free healthcare, education, housing, and more!
You’d think she’d be able to throw together a coherent answer by now, but it’s mostly politics preventing her from doing so.
For as much as liberals want to pretend we could pay for those aforementioned welfare programs by simply taxing “the rich,” or cutting defense spending, that wouldn’t even come close. There’s a reason that the average citizen in Sweden and Denmark (which enjoy most of the programs Cortez wants) pay over half their income in taxes. And that’s the average person.
Instead, Cortez is somehow trying to pretend that we’ll actually save money by spending a boatload. In transforming our health care system for a “Medicare for all” (aka universal healthcare) system.
She cited a study from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, which receives funding from the right-wing Koch Brothers. She wrongly claimed that one of their studies found that “Medicare for all” would be cheaper than our current system. “You know in a Koch Brothers-funded, you know, study, if any study’s going to try to be a little bit slanted, it would be one funded by the Koch brothers. It shows that Medicare for all is actually much more — is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now” Cortez said.
This is a hilariously poor misunderstanding of the study. The Mercatus study analyzed a “Medicare for all” bill with specifications designed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the study assumed that everything Bernie wanted would be implemented flawlessly. That means the study had a number of assumptions, with the two main ones being that:
- The study was estimating under the assumption that medical professionals and drug companies would see 40% cuts in pay overnight under a Medicare for all system.
- The study was estimating under the assumption that we could somehow ensure 30 million people while reducing overall healthcare usage by 11%.
And what do you know, when you add two impossible assumptions, the Mercatus study found that a Medicare for all program would save $2 trillion over ten years. But simply removing the assumption that everyone in the healthcare industry would be willing to work for half-pay, and it creates a $5.4 trillion deficit over ten years. The study says all that, so it’s clear she didn’t actually bother to read it.
That misunderstanding of a study aside, Cortez also offered us this gem: “We — Americans have the sticker shock of healthcare as it is, and what we’re also not talking about is, why aren’t we incorporating the cost of all the funeral expenses of those who died because they can’t afford access to healthcare? That is part of the cost of our system.” I must admit, I haven’t heard the “medical care is expensive because of funerals” argument before.
Cortez certainly must be aware that even with Medicare for all, people are still going to be having funerals, right?
