AOC says 'everyone should have healthcare in America', slams GOP Medicaid cuts
AOC: They wanted to issue this statement as though we’re just going after these 30-year-old men on Medicaid playing video games in their basement, right? This was the narrative that we heard.
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 9, 2026
First of all, I think everyone should have healthcare in America, regardless of who you… pic.twitter.com/d2ShivxSRT
WASHINGTON, DC: Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Republican narratives portraying Medicaid recipients as “undeserving,” saying stereotypes about “30-year-old men playing video games in their basements” are used to justify sweeping healthcare cuts.
Speaking as Congress debates Medicaid work requirements and funding reductions, the New York Democrat argued that healthcare should be available to everyone in America.
AOC blasts Medicaid stereotypes amid healthcare cuts debate
Speaking during the ongoing debate in Congress over Medicaid funding and work requirements, Ocasio-Cortez slammed Republican rhetoric about the program.
She said, "They wanted to issue this statement as though we’re just going after these 30-year-old men on Medicaid playing video games in their basement, right? This was the narrative that we heard."
Ocasio-Cortez said such portrayals are used to frame certain people as undeserving of public assistance. She said, “First of all, I think everyone should have healthcare in America, regardless of who you are and what you’re doing. And the idea that there is anyone who is less deserving because of who they are is the problem to begin with."
She further argued that the framing encourages Americans to judge one another rather than scrutinize policy decisions.
She said, "But that’s what they use to justify this, right? Because they want us to do the work for them. They want us to sort ourselves into the idea of deserving and undeserving, or pointing at our neighbors in terms of deserving and undeserving."
Calling the narrative a distraction, Ocasio-Cortez said it serves as a “smokescreen” to advance sweeping reductions in healthcare spending. According to her, that messaging has been used to push through proposals that could amount to “a trillion dollars in healthcare cuts across the board for all of us.”
AOC warns of rising US healthcare costs
During the same discussion on healthcare policy, Ocasio-Cortez argued that rising healthcare costs and policy changes are affecting Americans across the system, regardless of the type of coverage they rely on.
She said people with private insurance are already feeling the strain, noting that “if you have private insurance, your premiums are going up,” while small businesses are also struggling because “the cost of insuring your employees has skyrocketed.”
She added that Medicaid recipients are facing challenges as well, saying that many people who qualify are losing coverage because of increasing administrative hurdles. “Tons of people who qualify for Medicaid are getting kicked off because they're putting in all of this bureaucracy and red tape,” she said.
According to Ocasio-Cortez, even seniors on Medicare are affected, particularly through reductions related to long-term care. “So we're all in the same boat here,” she said.
The New York Democrat argued that lawmakers should focus on immediate steps to ease the burden on Americans, including extending subsidies created under the Affordable Care Act.
“We need to extend the ACA subsidies as we've been fighting in Congress,” she said, while also stressing that the US healthcare system faced deep structural issues even before the latest policy debates. “But also, we need to recognize that our health care system was broken before these cuts came into place.”
