Advertised as a big deal ahead of time, the debate didn’t get much play afterwards.
Especially from the Left blogosphere.
Why?
Billed as about the “future of ObamaCare,” it was really about what should replace ObamaCare.
The CNN debate pitted Sen. Ted Cruz, well-known Republican opponent of the Affordable Care Act*, against Sen. Bernie Sanders, well-known “independent” proponent of what he likes to call the “Medicare for All single-payer program.”
Upshot? While either Bernie or Ted may possibly be construed to have won, there was indeed one certain loser, ObamaCare itself.
Sen. Sanders conceded nearly every charge Sen. Cruz lobbed at the program. He merely countered with his support for treating health care “as a right, not a privilege” (a leftist farrago from days of yore) and moving on to single-payer medicine.
That’s how bad ObamaCare really is. Its chosen champion refused to champion it.
The basic tension was best summed up between “town hall” questioners Carol, suffering from multiple sclerosis, who asked Cruz to promise continued coverage for cases like hers, and LaRonda, a woman with a chain of hair care shops who cannot afford insurance for herself or her employees and also cannot expand her company because at 50 employees the ACA would force her to provide insurance.
Cruz expressed his sympathy for Carol, but seemed to meander around her request for a guarantee. He also evaded** a straightforward answer re: “healthcare as a right.”
Sanders was a tad more honest, in effect giving the “tough luck” answer that the entrepreneur just “should” pay*** for her employees’ medical insurance.
Well, we sure are all “paying” for ObamaCare, one way or another.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Which is the same thing as ObamaCare. Some folks purportedly hate ObamaCare but love the ACA. No reader of Common Sense, of course.
** Cruz concluded the debate better, alluding to an old SNL skit about a recording session wherein the cowbell ringer always wanted “more cowbell” in every take. “It was government control that messed this all up. And Bernie and the Democrats’ solution is more cow bell, more cow bell.”
*** “[I]f you have more than 50 people, you know what, I think — I’m afraid to tell you — I think you will have to provide health insurance.”
