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Ted Cruz on Health CareRepublican Texas Senator |
Ted Cruz (R): Absolutely repeal. Caused millions to lose their jobs, be forced into part-time work, lose health insurance & doctors & pay skyrocketing premiums.
Beto O'Rourke (D): Keep but improve, including public option. Repeal would reduce healthcare access & benefits, make health insurance less affordable.
CRUZ: Health care is personal in a way that is different from most other political issues. Health care affects our families. It's our moms. Health care is our kids. It's the future. It can quite literally be whether we live or die. Bernie and the Democrats want government to control health care. I trust you. And I trust your doctors. I think health care works better when you're in charge of your family's health care decisions, when you can sit down with your doctor and decide the care that's best for your family without government setting rules, without government rationing, without wait periods. Six years ago, when ObamaCare was being adopted, it's possible that reasonable minds could have differed on whether this was a good idea. But six years into it, we've seen the results.
SANDERS: The American people have caught on that the absolute repeal of ObamaCare without a plan to make it better, would be an absolute disaster.
SANDERS: I'm willing to look at it, if you are willing to look at legislation to allow Americans to buy less expensive medicine in Canada and other countries.
CRUZ: Just a couple of weeks ago, I voted with you in support of allowing drug re-importation. But a much bigger barrier than that is the fact that, in the last 20 years, the FDA has approved only three child cancer drugs? In 20 years, because the burdens are so great. I introduced legislation that said if a drug is approved in another major country, if it's approved in Europe or Japan, that the FDA has got 30 days to approve it here. We shouldn't be telling people with life-threatening diseases you can't do everything you can to save your lives.
FIORINA: Health insurance has always been a cozy, little game between regulators and health insurance companies. We need to try the free market.
TRUMP: The ObamaCare bill--nobody ever read it. They passed it; nobody read it. And look at mess we have right now. And it will be repealed.
CRUZ: The Congressional exemption from ObamaCare, which is fundamentally wrong, and I'll tell you this, if I'm elected president, I will veto any statute that exempts members of congress. The law should apply evenly to every American.
For nearly 50 years, Americans fought back against statism. Jimmy Carter's efforts failed in the 1970s. So did Hillary Clinton's in the 1990s. But in 2010, despite overwhelming opposition from the American people, President Barack Obama found just barely enough support in Congress, both houses of which were controlled by Democrats, to pass ObamaCare.
For example, we memorized "TCC NCC PCC PAWN MaMa WReN." Those letters stood for eighteen enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: "taxes, credit, commerce, naturalization, coinage, counterfeiting, post office, copyright, courts, piracy, Army, war, Navy, militia, money for militia, Washington, D.C., rules, and necessary and proper." If it's not in that list, Congress has no constitutional authority over it. (As I've often joked, you'll notice there's no "O" for "ObamaCare.")
We should expand health savings accounts, so we can save in a tax-advantaged manner for routine healthcare and prevention. And we should make health insurance portable, so it goes with you from job to job, which goes a long way to eliminating the problem of pre-existing conditions. High-risk pools at the state level can solve the rest of that problem.
Personal, portable and affordable. That should be where we go after repealing ObamaCare.
The president did the same thing for members of Congress. Contrary to law, the administration issued a ruling exempting members of Congress (but not ordinary Americans) from the explicit requirements of ObamaCare.
Some people might wonder why an opponent of ObamaCare like me is bothered by the president's failure to enforce a law I dislike. To be sure, I believe ObamaCare is bad, and I'm fighting for Congress to repeal it altogether. But regardless of whether a law is good or bad, a president's unilateral revision of it is illegal--and dangerous to the rule of law.
As for his GOP rivals also eyeing the White House, Cruz seemed to raise doubts about their credentials and called on the audience to demand that all presidential aspirants demonstrate their conservative bona fides: "Demand action, not talk," Cruz said. "If a candidate tells you that they oppose ObamaCare, fantastic! But when have you stood up and fought against it? If a candidate says they oppose Obama's illegal executive amnesty, terrific. When have you stood up and fought against it?
"Repeal every blasted word of ObamaCare," Cruz concluded.
"Some might say, this is hard. This is really hard. The media tells us it can't be done. But you know each of us has seen miracles every day," Cruz said.
Cruz noted that a Catholic religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, has been battling with the Obama administration over mandates in the Affordable Care Act the sisters say would violate their religious liberties. "Here is a real good rule of thumb: If you are litigating against nuns, as the Obama administration is, you have probably done something wrong," Cruz said.
CRUZ: We've got to demonstrate that the campaign words Republicans used on the trail were more than just talk, that we're willing to honor our commitment.
Q: But you're willing to shut down departments and you're willing to take the backlash? It didn't work very well with ObamaCare.
CRUZ: At the time, you and a lot of folks in the press said what a disaster it was to stand up and fight on ObamaCare. That it was going to cost Republicans the majority. It was going to cost seats. Let me point out, we just had an historic election where we won. We've got the biggest majority in the House since the 1920s. And the number one issue that candidates campaigned on was ObamaCare. Not only did the disaster that a lot of folks predicted not happen, it was the biggest victory we've had in a long time.
CRUZ: There were, no doubt, mistakes that were made up and down the line. But the biggest mistake that continues to be made is now, we continue to allow open commercial air flights from countries that have been stricken by Ebola. We have got upwards of 150 people a day coming from countries with live, active Ebola outbreaks. For over two weeks, I have been calling on the administration to take the commonsense stand of suspending commercial air travel out of these countries until we get the air travel under control. And for whatever reason, the Obama White House doesn't want to do so.
Q: What mistakes were made?
CRUZ: Throughout this process, there have been mistakes. And listen, dealing with a virus epidemic is a learning process with very high stakes. And so we can't afford mistakes. But the best thing to do is to minimize the initial contact with Ebola.
CRUZ: If enough Congressional Democrats realize they either stand with ObamaCare and lose, or they listen to the American people and have a chance at staying in office, that's the one scenario we could do it in 2015. If not, we'll do it in 2017.
Q: So you honestly think there's a chance that you can get ObamaCare repealed, every word, as you say?
CRUZ: Every single word.
Q: With Obama in the White House?
CRUZ: You know, what's funny is the media treats that as a bizarre proposition.
Q: Well, it is.
CRUZ: It is the most unpopular law in the country. Millions of people have lost their jobs, have lost their health care, have been forced into part-time work, have their premiums skyrocketing. And right now, Washington isn't listening to those people. That's how we win elections and that's also how we repeal ObamaCare.
"We should stop issuing travel visa's from Liberia," Cruz said. "It shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should be protecting citizens of this country."
This conservative media driven travel ban totally died down towards the end of 2014 when no other Ebola cases were reported in the US. Ironically, with some exceptions, only neighboring countries in Africa did issue this ban.
Cruz's plan through Goldman Sachs has been criticized by the left media and democrats, who describe it as an uncomfortable fact for the conservative senator who continuously lambasts the health care reform law while he enjoys a high-priced health plan.
In a poll taken after the government shutdown Cruz's popularity among the Tea Party's supporters soared to 74 percent favorable from 47 percent in July.
Cruz says he has no regrets over forcing a 16-day government shutdown in 2013 in his effort to defund Obamacare. Later when asked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace whether the shutdown was "worth it," he replied, "Absolutely!"
"We should stop issuing travel visa's from Liberia," Cruz said. "It shouldn't be a partisan issue. We should be protecting citizens of this country."
This conservative media driven travel ban totally died down towards the end of 2014 when no other Ebola cases were reported in U.S. ironically, with some exceptions, only neighboring countries in Africa did issue this ban.
There is no example of lawlessness more egregious than the enforcement--or non-enforcement--of the president's signature policy, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama has repeatedly declared that "it's the law of the land." Yet he has repeatedly violated ObamaCare's statutory text.
The law says that businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will face the employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014. President Obama changed that, granting a one-year waiver to employers. How did he do so? Not by going to Congress to change the text of the law, but through a blog post by an assistant secretary at Treasury announcing the change.
In other words, rather than go to Congress and try to provide relief to the millions who are hurting because of the "train wreck" of ObamaCare (as one Senate Democrat put it), the president instructed private companies to violate the law and said he would in effect give them a get-out-of-jail-free card--for one year, and one year only. Moreover, Obama simultaneously issued a veto threat if Congress passed legislation doing what he was then ordering.
In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking private companies to do the same.
CRUZ: In terms of whether we should have stood and fought on ObamaCare, I think the proof is in the pudding. Millions of people across the country have seen why we were standing and fighting because ObamaCare is a disaster. Five million Americans all across this country had their health insurance canceled because of ObamaCare. [Obama should] look in the camera say, "I'm sorry. I told you if you like your health insurance plan you can keep it. I told you if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and that wasn't true." But then, here is the real kicker, if you are really sorry, you actually do something to fix the problem. The pattern we've seen over and over again with this president is he says he's sorry, expresses outrage then doesn't fix the problem, he keeps doing it over and over.
But even through this chaotic back-and-forth, the two candidates owned their distinctively different political views. Cruz again cemented his vow to repeal President Obama's Affordable Care Act, while Sadler said Congress can't afford to take away the benefits the reform has offered to young adults and the elderly.
A: We must save Medicare by gradually increasing the eligibility age and by moving to a premium support system that expands choices for seniors, opens up innovation, and utilizes market forces to rein in healthcare costs.
The Contract from America, clause 7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care:
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling
The Club for Growth's "Repeal-It!" Pledge for candidates states, "I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government."
Christian Coalition publishes a number of special voter educational materials including the Christian Coalition Voter Guides, which provide voters with critical information about where candidates stand on important faith and family issues. The Christian Coalition Voters Guide summarizes candidate stances on the following topic: "Repealing "Obamacare" that forces citizens to buy insurance or pay a tax"
Christian Coalition publishes a number of special voter educational materials including the Christian Coalition Voter Guides, which provide voters with critical information about where candidates stand on important faith and family issues. The Christian Coalition Voters Guide summarizes candidate stances on the following topic: "Tax credits for purchasing private health insurance"