Cruz faced a former constituent who left Texas to obtain Medicaid services in Maryland to combat her multiple sclerosis symptoms.
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Sanders said Cruz’s promise for protections is in contradiction to the promises of Cruz’s presidential campaign.
Sanders replied that though “Ted and the Republican leaders” want to just leave this problem to the states, he contended that it was the “moral and right thing” for the federal government to take on the problem. Sanders felt no such angst, rattling off the names of wealthy Scandinavian countries when Cruz insisted that socialism would drive people into poverty. Even one of the key Obamacare architects, Jonathan Gruber, later famously admitted that the Obama administration and its allies misled the public during that year saying, “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage”.
TED CRUZ: Well, Carol, thank you for sharing your story, and congratulations on dealing with M.S. It’s a awful disease, and congratulations on your struggles dealing with it. This program consists of the government offering all Americans the comprehensive care coverage of their health needs no matter what they are. Apparently Cruz made a decision to haul out the old chestnut about Canadians fleeing en masse to the USA for health care, which just proves how crappy government-run medicine is. “The function of insurance companies is not to provide quality health care to all people”.
“I’m not a wealthy person, so it’s impossible for me to grow my business”, she said. By repeatedly shifting the argument to be about universal healthcare, rather than the status quo, Sanders brilliantly managed to put Cruz on the defensive. So it may be working well with you, but I’ll tell you nationally the health outcomes under Medicaid are really poor. “What is a right is choosing your own doctor”.
“Without those mandates”, Cruz explained. Insurance company profits have doubled under Obamacare. Constitutionally guaranteed rights are a bit more numerous yet still numbered – the right to bear arms, the right to assemble, the right to free speech, the right to trial by jury, the right to exercise our faith freely, and a few others. Although he reminded Sanders they differ on what the best course of action is to achieve this shared goal. Over and over he pointed out that, “people on welfare have markedly worse health outcomes than those on private insurance”. “When you lose your job, you don’t lose your vehicle insurance or life insurance, ” Cruz argued. Cruz also suggested forcing the FDA to act faster in approving new treatments.
Cruz then called for ending the IRS, and establishing a 10 percent flat tax, arguing that it would end “the power of Washington”.
That’s not to say everything always went well for Sanders.
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But over the last seven years, while they voted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare, Republicans did little work on the “replace” part of their “repeal and replace” mantra since they didn’t control the White House.
