Marketa Ruzickova 🇨🇿/🇺🇸

Chris Cuomo asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez how we pay for Medicare for All, tuition free college, and the green new deal. It gives people sticker shock. Her answer: “People talk about the sticker shock of Medicare for All, but they do not talk about the sticker shock of our existing system. In a Koch brothers funded study, it shows that Medicare for All is actually much cheaper than the current system. Let's not forget that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act because they ruled that each of these monthly payments that everyday Americans make is a tax. We pay it every single month. (Or we pay at tax season if we don't buy plans off of the exchange.) Americans have the sticker shock of healthcare as it is. Why aren't we incorporating the cost of funeral expenses of those who die because they can't afford access to healthcare? That is part of the cost of our system. Or the cost of reduced productivity because of people who need to go on disability or are not able to participate in our economy because they don't have access to the healthcare that they need? At the end of the day, we see that this is not a pipe dream. Every other developed nation in the world has this. Why can't America? And that is the question we need to ask. We write blank checks for war. We just wrote a $2 trillion check for the GOP tax cut. And nobody asks how are we going to pay for it. So my question is why are our pockets only empty when it comes to education and healthcare for our kids? Why are our pockets only empty when we talk about 100% renewable energy that is going to save this planet and allow our children to thrive? We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do. But when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires or unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily. To me it belies a lack of moral priorities that people have right now, especially the Republican Party.”