Watch Ted Cruz Argue With Disabled Man’s Family About Health Care

Texas Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has placed a lot of electoral eggs in the basket that is Indiana, and so it was that Cruz found himself gamely pressing the flesh with voters outside the Pie Pan restaurant in Evansville this weekend. Pool cameras caught most of what was a truly impressive display of retail politicking by Cruz, who dutifully posed for photos and chatted up voters, and even managed to find a couple of eight year-old girls who weren’t terrified of him. All this was done to periodic bursts of song from Cruz body man Bruce Redden:

Toward the end of the procession, an older couple introduced Senator Cruz to a disabled man named Scott, and had some words with Cruz about health care:

Parts of the conversation are tough to make out, but the man expresses a concern that if the Affordable Care Act were repealed, “people like him would not be able to get health insurance at all,” to which Cruz replies “There’s no doubt that we need to provide care…”

“But it was never done before,” the man replies. “It was never done. Nobody did it.”

“I can tell you millions have lost their health care at the same time,” Cruz responds.

The man then points to Scott and says “Well, but it made a difference to some.”

That’s exactly where the pool feed cut out.

The Affordable Care Act contains so many provisions that protect access to health insurance that it’s difficult to pinpoint which one they were discussing, but it was likely the preexisting condition provision which Cruz has consistently opposed. Cruz’s assertion that “millions have lost their health care” is not borne out by data on the uninsured rate, which has fallen from 18% to 11.9% since the Affordable Care Act took effect, or about 20 million people.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.