What Ted Cruz didn't tell you in his 21-hour rant...

 First of all, Ted Cruz and the Tea Party have no alternative other than “let private industry take care of health care.”  Insurance companies could care less about your health or health care for the nation.  An insurance company's game is to insure well people who won't make claims.  Big hospital corporations do not want you butting into their practice of charging $1,000 for a procedure that medical experts value at $100.  They do not want anyone, including the government, to question whether or not it's right for them to charge 1/3 of the cost of an expensive machine for one person's use of it.  The big pharmaceutical companies do not want to be required to negotiate the cost of drugs for the citizens of this country with any regulatory body that could diminish the cost of drugs.  The big pharmaceuticals want to keep charging you $100 for a pill you can buy in Canada for $10.  

The Affordable Care Act would change many of these abuses.

Ted Cruz will not mention the fact that the Affordable Care Act--“Obamacare”--forces insurance companies to sell you insurance even though you or your child have a pre-existing condition.  A host of highly-paid special interest lobbyists, being defended by Ted Cruz, would like to continue pushing their policy to drop you from insurance coverage should you have the audacity to actually use it.  Few others than Cruz would even attempt to make the argument that it is fair for you to pay health insurance for 20-30 years, and then when you have a serious illness, the company should be able to drop you from coverage.  Many parents who have good coverage would like their children to remain covered under the parents' plan so the children have time to obtain, for example, a graduate degree in college.  Ted Cruz would take that option away.

Cruz and company seem to think it is a great system for those without any other alternative simply to go to the emergency room for any type of care, particularly for children who need attention.  They won't tell you this is the most expensive method of health care ever conceived in the mind of man--and you pay for it out of your pocket, if you pay for your health care as you go along, or have insurance to cover your needs.  Cruz and his billionaire backers want to create a fog of lies and cloud over the truth about the Affordable Care Act.  If one can pierce this fog, "Obamacare"--the Affordable Care Act--will be revealed as having a solid basis.  The cost of health care, particularly in the form of medical insurance, is out of control.  Decent health care is beyond the reach of millions of Americans--with Texas leading the U.S. in the number of citizens uninsured and without adequate medical care.  Uncompensated health care at emergency rooms in Texas alone this past year exceeded $15 billion.  Hospitals do not pay this bill.  They simply add it to the cost of your insurance or to the cost of your visit to the emergency room when you pay cash.

Getting everyone covered will increase the pool of people paying for health care in this country; and, ultimately, it will reduce the cost for us all.  Mandatory health care coverage demands personal responsibility to pay when we are in need of care and not palm off the cost onto our fellow citizens.  The spiraling cost of health care adds virtually nothing to our gross national product and will eventually cause serious damage to our country's economy.  It is already causing serious damage to many households in the United States.  

Hardworking American families should not have to face bankruptcy when misfortune falls and causes them to suffer devastating illnesses, death and desperation. 

Our current health care delivery system makes me think of those pickup trucks I see on the road where the owners have raised the level of the truck so that the running board is about chest high on a full-grown man.  Auto companies have spent billions of dollars designing automobiles and trucks to be comfortable and user friendly to the greatest number of people.  I do not dispute that a big, brawny pickup truck with a strong engine and the ability to go perhaps where other vehicles cannot go can be a powerful thing to behold--just as our technical machinations and medical achievements in this country may be so bold as to inspire wonder.  Unfortunately, like the jacked-up pickup truck, not everyone can climb into the cab.