McKINNEY, Texas — Even a controlled town hall that was supposed to stay focused on issues affecting military veterans couldn’t suppress the debate over repealing Obamacare that is roiling Washington and the rest of the country.
Near the tail end of a forum here with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that was sponsored and run by Concerned Veterans for American, a conservative group, an argument broke out over the merits of repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Misty Hook, who identified herself as a psychologist who treats veterans at a reduced cost in Allen, told Cruz as she asked him his plans for making mental health coverage more affordable that “you all, on the Hill, are scaring the living daylights out of us with the healthcare nonsense that you’re doing.”
At one point, Cruz said that “Obamacare the last seven years has proven to be a manifest disaster,” Hook shouted back: “Not for us.” She later told the Washington Examiner that President Barack Obama’s signature law has helped her patients afford healthcare.
Neither Hook, nor Buddy Luce, an attorney from South Lake, were satisfied with Cruz’s response that the answer is to make healthcare more affordable by reducing premiums. The senator’s goal has proposed curbing mandatory protections, so that Americans could purchase coverage that better fit their needs.
“His goal is to reduce premiums,” Luce told reporters, after the forum concluded. “Reducing premiums doesn’t fix the ACA, it doesn’t make healthcare better. All it does is allow insurance companies to sell people that are sold on a fake GOP promise of choice.”
Hook and Luce were in the minority at this event. Their complaints that Cruz wasn’t addressing the question, voiced extemporaneously near the end of the town hall, were drowned out by shouts to let the senator speak, and applause for his answers after he did respond.
Ivette Lozano, a Cruz supporter, told the Washington Examiner in an interview after the forum that Obamacare was putting family practitioners like her out of business because the system makes it financially untenable to practice.
She said Republicans had better keep their promise to fully repeal Obamacare, or there would be consequences in 2018 — and 2020 for President Trump. And she warned that the American Health Care Act passed by House Republicans, and the Senate GOP’s Better Care Reconciliation Act do not qualify as full repeal.
“I thought that the House bill was awful, it did not lower premiums, and the Senate bill is awful, too,” Lozano said.
“We’re going to start getting all those people out of Congress; we’re going to go primary every single one of them that is talking to the people and saying they’re going to repeal,” she added. “If he does that, the president will not be re-elected in four years. The promise that he made to the American people, if he puts out a bad bill, will come back to haunt him.
Cruz told reporters before departing that he wasn’t surprised that the question and answer session eventually turned to the subject of Obama’s signature law, and Republican efforts to repeal it.
“It was a good and productive exchange. This is an issue that inspires passion, and quite understandably. People care about their healthcare; it’s personal,” he said.
“I hope it was helpful in explaining some of the differences in terms of policy solutions,” Cruz added, “that we need to respond not to the demagoguery and fearmongering, which this issue sadly provokes in some circumstances, but we need to respond to the very real failures and pain being caused by Obamacare.”
Cruz said he is pleased with the progress of negotiations to repeal the law in the Senate, although he conceded during the forum: “It’s been bumpy. I am not certain we’ll get it done. I hope we will. I believe we will.”
Cruz, up for re-election next year, traveled to McKinney, about an hour’s drive north of Dallas, for an event billed as a town hall meeting. In reality, it was more like a controlled forum designed to elicit an audience of military veterans with questions that relate to the unique issues they face.
Concerned Veterans for America policy director Dan Caldwell moderated and screened most of the questions. But the group said it did not screen attendees other than for security purposes. Held in a hotel conference room, the first approximately 250 to RSVP were accepted regardless of political affiliation.
About 100 protesters assembled peacefully outside, chanting for Cruz to drop support for the Better Care Reconciliation Act and support liberal healt care policies. The senator has two more such events scheduled this week, in Austin and Houston, two urban centers where opponents of the GOP healthcare agenda could be more plentiful.
There were some fireworks in McKinney.
After the forum concluded, Luce and Lozano got into an argument over the merits of Obamacare, in the middle of the conference center, as attendees were either streaming for the exits or heading up front for the senator to shake hands and take selfies.
“Don’t you think healthcare is a human right?” Luce asked Lozano, who responded: “No, I think it’s personal responsibility to take care of you. I don’t think healthcare is a human right, I think it’s a personal decision to take care of your health.”
