Depending on which audience member you ask, you would get polar opposite opinions regarding Senator Ted Cruz’s town hall discussion.
Within half an hour, the forum designed for Cruz to answer predetermined questions turned into a shouting match between audience members.
Cruz did spend time talking about the failures of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and outlined his plans for repealing and replacing it.
“After seven years of promising voters over and over again if you elect us we’re going to repeal Obamacare, I think the consequences could be catastrophic if failing to do it,” he told reporters following the event.
Cruz advocated for lower premiums, explaining that improving waiting times would be the “best way to change a monopoly on healthcare. He said that competition for coverage would drive rates down.
“Every veteran should have the right to choose your own doctor,” he said to the constituents. “The best person to choose is not me, not Washington, it’s you.”
Concerned Veterans for America hosted he discussions in McKinney on Wednesday, Austin on Thursday, and upcoming town hall in Houston on Saturday.
“The feedback we’ve gotten from the people here to legitimately learn was that they’re actually interested in these ideas,” said the group’s policy director, Dan Caldwell.
Susanne Grabkowski, a democrat who identifies as a progressive, says her private health insurance through her husband’s employer has kept her family afloat. Grabkowski is a cancer survivor, and lost a child a few weeks after giving birth. She reserved a ticket to Thursday’s town hall.
“It was so hard to go through the things that I went through with excellent private health insurance,” she said. “It just feels wrong for some people to be have-nots and just not have access to anything like that.”
She argued single-payer healthcare is the best model.
“Ted Cruz is no savior of healthcare,” said Joe Miguez, an Army veteran. Miguez has also considered a congressional run.
“Veterans healthcare is such an important trust and it’s something we owe to those people that served our country, owed to those people that put their lives and their health and their family’s safety on the line for us then I think you’d oppose what the CVA is support of and why Senator Cruz is in support of,” Miguez mentioned.
Protestors outside the town hall venue called for Cruz to vote “no” on the GOP’s version of their healthcare bill. Just before the event started, the group made its way to the entrance, where authorities kept demonstrators at bay.
Back inside, retired engineer and Navy veteran, Bill Kelberlau, said he agreed with what he heard from the Senator. Kelberlau said he read all of the legislature.
“I’m one of the few,” he said with a smile.
“Once you actually understand the need, you can go design that provides that need for the citizens,” he stated.
Cruz maintained that the country needed to keep its promise to the veterans who served the American people.
The Senator and the CVA team head to Houston for the weekend, and Saturday’s town hall.
