04/22/2026
“A picture’s worth 1,000 words” — and these two perfectly encapsulate how AOC absolutely eviscerated “Health” Secretary RFK Jr. today.
Cross-posted from Women Forward:
RFK was attempting to defend Trump’s latest budget proposal. While last week’s hearings focused on the secretary’s failures to protect public health, this round focused on his complicity in the corruption of this administration’s health care policies.
And AOC led that charge — highlighting the contradiction between Kennedy’s rhetoric and his recent policy decisions, specificially, sending billions to major health insurers he has previously accused of fraud.
“United [Healthcare], CVS, Aetna—they’re defrauding the American public to the tune of $80 billion a year,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And so I was surprised to see, about two weeks ago, you had decided to give them another $13 billion, and it was used through the mechanism of the MA [Medicare Advantage] reimbursement rates, but I want to know, why did you do that?”
After Kennedy acknowledged concerns about the industry, he offered up a meandering response, which Ocasio-Cortez politely threw back in his face.
“The industry is saying that they’re increasing these costs, but the industry is defrauding the public. So we know they’re lying,” she responded. “They’re lowering their reimbursement rates, they’re increasing denial. So we know that these folks are lying. We know that they’re bad actors. And if I’m hearing you correctly, we are giving them more money because they’re saying that they need it?”
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Photo Credit: Charlotte Clymer/Daily Kos
Christina Lorey.
