Watching Bernie Sanders debate American health care with Ted Cruz is like watching Maxine Waters debate Thomas Sowell on economics.  In short, not a fair fight.  Sanders has only ideology; Cruz has facts and exceptional intellectual firepower.

Bernie is unable to grasp the hardships Obamacare has perpetrated upon millions of people and small business owners.  One woman spoke about how she could not expand her business – low-cost hair salons with a very low profit margin.  Because of Obamacare, she could not afford to hire more than 49 people.  Sanders said she should be paying for those employees' health insurance.  She herself did not have insurance.  Bernie did not hear what she was saying: "There is no money."  He heard not a word the woman said.  Like most socialists, to Bernie, the woman is not a person; she is a government entity and should do as she is told.  If the numbers do not add up, government will adjust the numbers to fit the agenda, just as at the VA. 

Bernie is confused about "rights" as well.  He believes that every human has a right to American health care and dental care at taxpayer expense.  Cruz believes that every person has a right to choose his doctor and the kind of insurance he wants and needs and that those with pre-existing conditions must be covered.

Under Obamacare, most people who did sign up have fewer and fewer choices and are paying higher and higher premiums with higher and higher deductibles.  Some states have only one choice of insurer.  One insurer equals no choice; that company has that state's residents by the short hairs.

Bernie opposes the free-market competition that would make choice, lower costs, and access to care possible for all people.  Bernie thinks people who can afford health insurance should be punished by forcing them to pay for the health care of others, no matter the hardship such a law imposes.

That most of the people who have enrolled in Obamacare are being provided for under Medicaid is at the root of the problem.  The Obamacare plan of having young, healthy people pay for the care of the old, sick, and indigent was never going to work.  But then it probably was not meant to work. 

Cruz repeatedly spoke about how socialized medicine is rationed medicine: the government decides who gets care, when he gets it, and how much that care will cost, and how much the doctor who provides it will be paid.  Bernie will not admit he supports rationed care, but of course he does.  

A doctor in my neighborhood, an orthopedic surgeon affiliated with a hospital, recently closed his office.  His last check for treatment provided to a patient "covered" by Obamacare was thirty-seven cents!  Less than the postage it cost to mail the check.  It was for treating a young person with a broken arm.  He closed his office because he could not keep it open at those remuneration rates.  He could not pay his employees.  He gave up his career, and he is not the only doctor making that decision since Obamacare was implemented.

It is to CNN's credit that they televised this debate between Sanders and Cruz.  It likely did not end as they had hoped.  For reasons that can only be ideological, given the hosts, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, they assumed that Sanders would "win" the debate.  But, to their credit, they did allow questions from the audience that were on point and elicited the answers that, for the most part, embarrassed Sanders and let Cruz's mastery of the topic educate the viewing public.

This was not a debate; it was an overt exposure of the feet of clay on which Obamacare was built.  Bernie Sanders may mean well, but he is out of his depth when it comes to the economy, health care, law enforcement, and just about every other issue we face today.  He lives in a small state without a remotely diverse population (625K people, 9K of whom are Hispanic and 6,300 black) and yet deigns to tell the rest of us that we must subsidize the vast population of uninsured.  He was willingly used and abused by Hillary Clinton.  He is not a person to whom any of us should look to for intellectual, moral, or political guidance.  Sanders is a garden-variety socialist who loathes America as founded. 

Thanks to CNN for broadcasting the vivisection of Obamacare.  It was indeed built on an "edifice of lies."  Let us hope Donald Trump can repeal and replace it with a plan that actually offers a solution for the millions of people betrayed by Obamacare – a plan that does not devolve into the failed systems of the European and Canadian models.  Cruz eviscerated the U.K. and Canadian models of waiting, waiting, and waiting for needed care.

Trump won the election in large part because of the ruinous failure of the ACA.  He will win re-election if he can successfully repeal and replace it.