This is why we only allow softball questions, people

HUBBARD, IOWA- Senator Ted Cruz is often asked about doing away with President Obama’s health care law. He is rarely pressed by voters on what will replace it. But at a middle school cafeteria here, a man, Mike Valde, presented him with a tragic tale. His brother-in-law Mark was a barber- “a small-business man,” he said. He had never had a paid vacation day. He received health insurance at last because of the Affordable Care Act. He began to feel sick and went to a doctor. “He had never been to a doctor for years,” Mr. Valde, 63, of Coralville, Iowa said. “Multiple tumors behind his heart, his liver, his pancreas. And they said, ‘We’re sorry, sir, there’s nothing we can do for you.’” The room was silent. “Mark never had health care until Obama care,” Mr. Valde continued. “What are you going to replace it with?”

The problem with the health care debate, especially in the manner it’s framed by Sen. Cruz, is that it’s conceptual. It’s not about people. There’s no human cost, because people in this argument are merely pawns subservient to Cruz’ self-absorbed ideology. When you begin talking about individuals and their struggles to afford health care and health insurance in the most affluent country in the world, you begin to realize that the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) has been a success. It hasn’t been successful if the criteria is guaranteeding every American, regardless of circumstance, a basic level of health care…but that “failure” can and should be laid at the foot of Republicans. When you look at the millions of previously uninsured Americans who now have health insurance coverage- yes, in that sense it’s absolutely been a success. ACA may not be perfect, but it’s a damned sight better than what came before.

I have a Conservative friend who will discourse at some considerable length about how ACA is “the worst sort of tyranny” imaginable. I suppose if you define “tyranny” as “providing health insurance coverage to those previously uninsured,” then yes, I guess we’re talking about something as tyrannical as it is un-American. If you, like me, proceed from the supposition that health care is a basic human right, that the quality (or even availability) of health care shouldn’t be dependent on the contents of one’s bank account, ACA is nothing even faintly redolent of tyranny.