On Saturday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested that failing to move to Medicare for All takes away freedom. In her statements on social media, AOC says that tying healthcare benefits to an employer increases precariousness of life. You an see her comments below.
For everyone who prioritizes “consumer choice” over a single payer healthcare system, understand that when you force people’s access to healthcare to be tied to their employment, you actually take away their freedom and increase the precariousness of their lives ⬇️ https://t.co/1Q6tcLEFum
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 7, 2020
AOC’s argument is that we should give away free healthcare, because not doing so places people in an uncertain situation without options. But that’s not exactly true. If an individual loses their healthcare coverage, there are still options for coverage outside of employers.
For example, in the above tweet, this individual qualifies for healthcare coverage through COBRA. In fact, the tweet was a statement by someone about how the Coronavirus is causing issues in the travel industry, not on the loss of healthcare coverage. AOC was simply using the situation to capitalize on a program that she wants to implement.
She continued her statements on social media that healthcare coverage should not be an employer perk, but rather a human right. What’s interesting is that AOC leaves out a lot of the story that I think is interesting.
Healthcare should be treated as a human right, not a employer perk. #MedicareForAll
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 7, 2020
When you study the history of health benefits from employers, it actually comes as a result of Democrat policy. FDR signed the Emergency Price Control Act amendment, giving him the authority to freeze wages. He proceeded to freeze wages one day later which caused a crisis for employers. The problem? Employers needed to recruit workers, but now they could not increase wages to recruit those employees.
For employers, benefits packages were not included as part of wages. So many employers proceeded to offer benefits packages as a way to entice employees. So these benefits are part of an employees wage, as recognized on their W2 statements thanks to Obamacare.
Democrats would like you to believe that transitioning to Medicare for All will be better and cause the employers to be able to pay higher wages. That’s simply not true. On Sanders site, the Medicare for All policy description describes how employers will pay a 7.5% payroll tax. This is an income based premium, which means the less wages that an employer pays, the cheaper their healthcare costs become.
Healthcare insurance is the biggest expense for any employer. Under Sanders plan, many employers would see a decrease in the cost, without any requirements to pay that revenue out to employees. So while Sanders argues that he does not want to help the rich get richer, that is actually what his plan does. He allows companies to retain more of their earnings.
Under Sanders plan, employees would receive a 4% tax increase, while losing the pretax deduction for their healthcare premiums. This will result in a higher taxable amount of income and a higher tax bill overall. Not to mention the other additional taxes that Sanders would like to levy on taxpayers to help pay for the plan. If you do not get the picture, Sanders plan helps employers while hurting the employee. The exact opposite of what he claims it does.
AOC would like to argue that this takes away your freedom and makes you dependent on employees. Medicare for All would not give you freedom. Sure, it gives you freedom from your healthcare expense, but it takes away your money and makes you dependent on the government for healthcare. That’s just what these communists want. They want you dependent so they can stay in control.
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