Democratic Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the private health insurance market to “death panels” during a back-and-forth exchange on Twitter Sunday.
The tweet was in response to Jim Hanson, president of the Security Studies Group. The two had been exchanging barbs over government involvement in the U.S. health care system.
The phrase “death panels” was coined by former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2009 to describe the rationing of government-run health care. The term was used to characterize former President Barack Obama’s health insurance reform plan.
Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist, repeated her calls Sunday for a “Medicare for all program, which would include a single-payer health care system.
This wasn’t the first eyebrow-raising comparison Ocasio-Cortez has made in recent time.
The democratic socialist — who won her New York congressional bid in an upset election over a powerful Democrat — on Friday compared her victory to the civil rights movement and the U.S. moon landing. Earlier in November, Ocasio-Cortez compared the caravan of Central American migrants attempting to enter the country illegally to Jews who fled the Holocaust.