During the Wednesday night edition of CNN’s Cuomo PrimeTime, host Chris Cuomo joined the ranks of many other liberals who have interviewed far-left hearthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-avowed socialist who upset incumbent Joe Crowley during the Democratic primary in New York on June 26.
However, the CNN anchor behaved far differently than those other people when he asked how she would “pay" for any new programs because of the “sticker shock” additional health care might create if she is elected to Congress on November 6.
Cuomo began the discussion by admitting that health care is a “non-partisan issue,” but he then noted:
When you get into the partisan issue of money, which is: “Man, do you want to spend a lot of my tax money on these proposals that you and [Democratic Senator] Bernie [Sanders] and others have? Medicare for all, college tuition, maybe even housing that the Green New Deal that you have.”
It is all very expensive -- especially on the single-payer side, and that it gives people sticker shock -- even in Bernie's home state [Vermont], they got sticker shock. How do you pay? How do you sell it?
They couldn't get it done in his state because of how expensive it is. And that was an 11 percent increase in taxes, 9 to 11 percent. Even that was too much for people.
“First of all,” the socialist guest replied, “the thing that we need to realize is people talk about the ‘sticker shock’ of Medicare for all. They do not talk about the sticker shock of our -- of the cost of our existing system.”
The candidate then took aim at common targets for liberal Democrats: Charles and David Koch. All the while, Ocasio-Cortez was given room to ramble without the usual interruptions that Cuomo doles out to any guest who has one iota of support for President Trump.
“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,” she stated. “It shows that Medicare for all is actually much more -- is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.”
Ocasio-Cortez then claimed that “we’re paying for this system” even though: Americans have “the sticker shock of health care” as it is, and then uncorked this doozy:
Americans have the sticker shock of health care 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 die because they can't afford access to health care? That is part of the cost of our system.
Why don't we talk about the cost of reduced productivity because of people who need to go on disability, because of people who are not able to participate in our economy because they have -- because they are having issues like diabetes or they don't have access to the health care that they need?
Just to finally convince every last person watching that she is indeed a socialist, the candidate then criticized “unlimited blank checks for war” and the GOP tax cut passed last year by Congress -- which she referred to as a “$2 trillion check” -- since “nobody asked those folks how are they going to pay for it.”
Ocasio-Cortez continued on and showing that, while Cuomo's initial question about paying for her socialist agenda was spot on, Cuomo's trademark badgering of guests was far more toned down. Hopefully, this concept of Cuomo asking liberal Democrat guests on his show more difficult questions is a sign of things to come -- even though it probably will fade away as we get ever closer to the midterm elections on November 6.
