Check out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning HHS Secretary RFK Jr. regarding Medicare Advantage (worth the 5 minute watch):
Link HERE if the video won’t play.
This is… masterful. Without RFK Jr. realizing it, by showing just a modicum of respect at the start, AOC immediately breaks inside RFK Jr.’s Circle of TrustTM.
Over the course of 5 minutes, she not only talks bluntly and directly about the fraud that is Medicare Advantage, but she gets RFK Jr. to agree with her - and state out loud - that the MA insurance companies are “lying”. She also gets him to state - out loud - that he agrees with everything she said regarding the fraud that is Medicare Advantage. At one point, he states, “You can see what our original intention was - to give them [MA insurers] essentially nothing.” And he ends by thanking her for allowing him to answer questions she asked. Stunning.
That’s what getting inside the Circle of TrustTM can do - even when dealing with adversaries (I especially like her comment starting at the 5:00 minute mark where she ends by saying, “I say we let them eat it. Why Not?” in regard to any funding increase for the MA insurers based on their self-proclaimed “increase in costs”).
NOTE: RFK Jr. still couldn’t help himself and came up with a critically misleading statement. Near the end, in response to AOC’s desire to not increase government funding for Medicare Advantage insurers, RFK Jr. states that they [HHS] got “blowback not only from the industry but from providers and everybody else who said ‘we are going to experience closures, we are going to experience places where you cannot get insurance; it is going to leave all these patients high and dry’”.
Let’s be clear - Traditional Medicare is available to any eligible person anywhere they live in the U.S. Having private for-profit insurers pull out of Medicare Advantage in a given geographical area does not leave people ”high and dry”. They can ALWAYS get Traditional Medicare insurance through the U.S. Government.
AOC is smart as a whip and a generational political talent. We should not be afraid to follow where she leads.
