Posted on 12/04/2018 12:47:56 PM PST by Kaslin
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will represent New York in Congress in January, has once again proven she’s more interested in misleading Americans about single-payer health care than having an honest debate that’s based on the facts.
On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez engaged in a brief Twitter sparring match with Jim Hanson, the president of the Security Studies Group. The exchange began after Hanson commented that under government-managed health care, “Democrat Socialist overlords” would decide “who will live and who will die,” adding “#DeathPanels rock,” at the end of his message.
Ocasio-Cortez, a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Medicare for All” proposal—a plan that would transform the current U.S. health care system into a single-payer model—responded to Hanson by alleging that “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.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that health insurance companies essentially act as “death panels” for choosing to cover certain treatments and not others is a highly erroneous, reckless comment. For starters, health insurance companies are heavily regulated—some of the most heavily regulated companies in the country, in fact—and they are already forced under the Affordable Care Act to cover “essential health” treatments, including emergency services, hospitalization, and some non-emergent treatments, like substance abuse services. States have numerous additional “essential health mandates.” The National Conference of State Legislatures notes “there are more than 1,900 such statutes among all 50 states; another analysis tallies more than 2,200 individual statute provisions, adopted over a 30+ year period.
It’s simply not true that there are all sorts of serious health problems health insurers don’t cover, which is clearly what Ocasio-Cortez was suggesting in her Twitter post.
Second, the “death panels” descried by Ocasio-Cortez aren’t “death panels” at all. Death panels are composed of government bureaucrats or policymakers who decide which health care treatments will be covered in a single-payer or government-run health care system. The reason they have been labeled “death panels” is because under many single-payer proposals, the government is the only insurer, which means it has complete power to decide which services will be covered. There are no other options in a single-payer system; either the government will choose to pay for your care or it won’t, and if it chooses not to, then you’re out of luck—unless, of course, you are a millionaire like Bernie Sanders.
Ocasio-Cortez says that because health insurers can choose not to cover certain services, that means they have “death panels,” too, but that’s totally false. In a true market-based system, if my health insurance company were to refuse to offer me a plan covering all of the services I’m most concerned about, I could simply go to another health insurer who would. If enough people want a particular health service covered, insurers would surely offer it; that’s how markets work. Since Ocasio-Cortez majored in economics, she should understand that basic, universal economic principle. If there is demand for a product or service, someone out there will supply it.
However, if we’re going to apply the term “death panel” in such a way that it can be used to describe anyone that makes health insurance too expensive, then the federal government is already the country’s biggest “death panel.” No one has done more to raise the cost of health insurance in the past decade than President Barack Obama and the Democrat-led Congress that passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
Since the Obamacare exchanges first opened in 2013, health insurance premiums have doubled. Even worse, Obamacare deductibles are so high, most people can’t afford to use the health insurance they purchased. HealthPocket reports the average maximum out-of-pocket costs for a family enrolled in an Obamacare Bronze Plan, the cheapest plan available on the exchanges, is greater than $14,000.
Ocasio-Cortez likely knows much of this, of course. But she, like many other politicians promoting single-payer health care, will say anything to trick people into supporting their government-run proposal. When you can’t win debates based on the facts, resorting to deception is the only option remaining.
Justin Haskins (@JustinTHaskins) is the executive editor and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and the editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.
“There are no other options in a single-payer system; either the government will choose to pay for your care or it won’t, and if it chooses not to, then you’re out of luck—unless, of course, you are a millionaire like Bernie Sanders.”
If you’ve been following the NHS in UK, it’s far worse than that, they have to ration care, not just deny payment for it. They don’t just decide what services can be funded, but which you are permitted to receive. Rationed care is the inevitable result of single-payer health insurance. People who can afford to pay are still not permitted to purchase the services they need.
A good recent example is Alfie Evans. NHS not only refused corrective, life-saving care, but took his parents to court to deny them the right to provide that care in the U.S. after at least one medical institution offered to deliver that care for free and they had a go-fund-me account to cover the costs and transportation fees. Alfie is now dead and his parents weren’t even permitted to take him home from the hospital to die in peace. They were afraid his parents would illegally save their child’s life by escaping to the U.S.
That is what a death panel really looks like and we don’t have that in the U.S. . .at least, not yet.
bttt
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is embarrassingly wrong about...
Everything!!!
“She’s getting way too much press...”
Yes and no. While I agree that she is a TOTAL NUTCASE now...she also represents the direction that the Democrats are going.
If we choose to ignore (and maybe even laugh at) what she’s saying and doing - we DESERVE the fate that the Left has in store for us, starting with CONCENTRATION CAMPS, for the purpose of re-education.
Fine, laugh at me, just as the ‘mainstream’ Jews of Germany LAUGHED at the relatively small number of Jews who ‘claimed’ that things would get really bad under Hitler.
“She’s getting way too much press..”
She’s 1/435th of the House of Representatives, but by the amount of press coverage she’s receiving you would think she was President.
I’ve lost count of how many threads there were just today with some idiotic thing she’s said.
Socialists ALWAYS have death panels. Ask the mentally challenged, depressed, gay or Jewish of Nazi Germany. Wait, you can’t because they’re dead.
My favorite quote of hers:
“If you can’t afford something, then pay for it and you can have it”
Like TOTALLY!
Did she actually ever have insurance as a bartender? Does she know how it works?
She is amazingly ill-informed for a person elected to her position. Socialist systems have failed virtually everywhere they have been tried (see Venezuela)......for a first termer, she has a real big mouth and had better watch her step or she will disappear from the public eye...
Seriously???
Sorry, gotta disagree. The more press she gets the more people realize she's an idiot, implicating the Democratic Socialists in the process.
Go go AOC. Tell us more, much more :)
She could have chosen brain surgery as her specialty. We got off easy.
This silly LIEberal bitch is WRONG about EVERYTHING!
Her 15 minutes of fame have lasted FAR TOO LONG!
It IS that she’s deliberately trying to mislead people!
AND, she just doesn’t know what she’s talking about!
Why should we “Give her the benefit of the doubt?”
She is a dumbass LIEberal!
Dumbass LIEberals should NEVER be given the benefit of the doubt!
Well, that is a stretch!
I doubt ANYONE can ever top ol’ Joe.
HST, Occasional-Cortex is giving it the ol’ college try!
BTW, she has GOT to be a major embarrassment to Boston University, where she majored in economics and international relations!
Ezekiel “ Dr Death” Emmanuel being a prime architect of obamacare
Do you remember when Obama said that older people should forego medical procedures like hip replacement and simply “ take a pain pill”?
Unlike his Granny we suppose, who defied his coldness
Do you remember when his HHS Director Sibelius refused to let a child accept an adult liver transplant ( which her doctors were advocating) because “ some live and some die”
The absolute coldness of a govt bureaucracy deciding when YOU have had your “ share” of medical services and should accept death!!
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/04/ezekiel_emmanuels_reaper_curve.html
She’s getting way too much press...
Exactly, I agree and started calling her out as well
She is Trumping us.....
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