“If you like your insurance, you can keep it” has become something of a rallying cry for centrist Democrats amid their continued opposition to a desperately needed overhaul of America’s dysfunctional health care system.

This focus group–tested and reductive slogan has always suffered from the same, glaringly obvious problem: namely, that the status quo binds health insurance for millions of American workers (and their families) to their employment status — meaning those who lose their jobs are liable to see their coverage disappear as quickly as their paychecks. “Choice” and individual autonomy, as implied by its misleadingly effusive framing, are an illusion under a system that gives bosses sovereignty over ordinary people’s access to medical care.

Nothing could have underscored this point more strongly than the ongoing global pandemic and its devastating macroeconomic impact, which has already seen unemployment claims go off the charts as businesses shutter and regular commercial activity grinds to a halt. Unsurprisingly, unthinkable numbers of American workers have already lost their health insurance — with the Economic Policy Institute putting the figure at around 3.5 million in the last fourteen days of March alone.