A prime-time debate between Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz about the future of Obamacare ended up mostly being about the past. | Getty Debating Obamacare's future, Cruz and Sanders detour to the past

A prime-time debate between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) about the future of Obamacare ended up mostly being about the past as the two lawmakers fell back on their respective 2016 presidential campaign arguments about health care as a human right versus freedom-crushing government intervention.

"Obamacare … isn't working," Cruz said during the nearly two-hour CNN debate Tuesday evening. "It was built on an edifice of lies." He resurrected the argument that voters were misled by former President Barack Obama’s promise that Americans who liked their plans could keep them, and he contended that government-run health care was actually harmful to human health.


Sanders, put in the somewhat ironic position of being Obamacare’s defender when he had run as its progressive critic, praised the Affordable Care Act, while acknowledging its shortcomings.

"Obamacare is a step forward. We have got to go further," Sanders said. He got only a few minutes into the debate, though, before he argued that a Medicare-for-all would have been a better approach.

The made-for-TV spectacle pitting one of the most liberal senators against one of the most conservative had low stakes — although Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander joked that if Cruz and Sanders agreed on an Obamacare compromise, he'd vote for it. But it did provide a glimpse into what might have been, had the two runner-ups won their respective nominations last year and ended up grappling over policy.

"Obamacare … isn't working," Sen. Ted Cruz said during the nearly two-hour CNN debate Tuesday evening. | Getty

It also was a high-profile platform for a GOP figure to argue in depth about Obamacare's woes, after then-Republican nominee Donald Trump often struggled to articulate problems with the health law during his winning 2016 campaign.

While Cruz was occasionally loose with the facts — he made misleading statements about medical tourism and drivers of health spending — he came armed with reams of damaging data, and at one point held up a Heritage Foundation chart on the lack of competition in many Affordable Care Act exchange markets.

Asked about the GOP's seeming slowdown on coming up with an Obamacare replacement, Cruz said that Republicans are still pushing ahead. "Everyone agrees there is an urgency to honor the promises we made," he said.

Sanders stumbled on a question from a Texas hair salon owner, who asked the Vermont senator how to grow her low-margin business to more than 50 employees while abiding by the ACA's mandate to cover employees' health coverage. She said it's not affordable — for her workers or herself.

"Let me give you an answer you will not be happy with," Sanders responded, arguing that her responsibility as a business owner was to provide health insurance to her workers, regardless of the cost.

The two senators often veered away from the battle over the future of Obamacare to discuss their other health care priorities, and other than a broad onslaught on the lack of patient protections, Sanders seldom brought the discussion around to specific ideas that the Republicans may enact as part of Obamacare replacement.

"I'm going to introduce legislation to have Medicare negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry," Sanders volunteered early in the debate. In response, Cruz called for reforming FDA and giving terminally ill people more access to unapproved medicines.