Thoughts on the healthcare debate

I finally got around to watching the Healthcare debate between Sanders and Cruz and it was a fairly good debate. It was refreshing to see a political debate about the issues instead of name calling and things of the sort. With that being said I feel Ted Cruz won this debate. Now, I actually like Bernie Sanders and support his Healthcare proposal of Universal Healthcare but he is not the best debater and Cruz has a lot of experience debating since he was on the debate team in college. The way I’m looking at this is is from the perspective of someone who is a newbie to the whole healthcare debate and hasn’t heard of either of the two politicians.

Cruz brought anecdotal stories and stats to back up his claims even though a lot of it was misleading while Sanders appealed more to emotions in that he kept complaining that we are the richest nation and we should be able to provide universal healthcare, which is true and he did bring some data to the table but I feel more could have been brought and more counterpoints to Cruz’s claims trying to discredit other nations healthcare which are universal. Where I felt Sanders was strongest though is when he brought up the fact that access, which Cruz kept babbling about, doesn’t equal affordability and this is a fact. Just because you have the ability to purchase something doesn’t mean you have the money for it and this is what Sanders was saying.

However in the broad look of things Cruz really doesn’t have a workable plan to replace Obamacare because when asked what his plan was, he brought up health saving accounts and selling insurance across states. Problem is, which Sanders should have pointed out is that people today don’t make enough for Health Saving Accounts when they struggle just to put food on the table and selling insurance across states is legal in some states despite what Cruz says but it’s not popular or profitable. But overall it was a good debate, and in my personal opinion I feel we need a Medicare for all program. Which like Bernie said, "like all the major industrialized nations have".