Ted Cruz Signs Up For Obamacare!

by wj

You just can't make upstuff like this. At least, my imagination can't manage it.

The Des Moines Register reports today that Senator Cruz will be signing up for Obamacare.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/24/ted-cruz-health-insurance-obamacare/70384334/

It seems that his wife is taking leave from Goldman Sachs to support his campaign. So he can no longer be on her health care plan. (Doesn't the Senate give its members health care??? Since when?)

Comments

[wj]

OK, got a small clarification. The Senate's health care plan goes thru the ACA's Federal exchange. But still....

[Brett Bellmore]

But, still, he didn't forego his employer paid health care, just to avoid the Federal exchange. Which is rather different from going out of his way to get into the Federal exchange.

[Comrade Misfit]

Well, one can't expect too much intellectual consistency from the Naturally-Born Commie.

(Cruz has Cuban citizenship through his father.)

[russell]

he was against it before he was in it

[wj]

Brett, how much do you want to bet that, during the primaries, his opponents make a big deal out of his being on the exchange? No matter what the details actually are. His having been an absolutist against the ACA, root and branch, it will be just too good to miss.

[Chris Lawrence]

Correct, one of the "poison pills" in ACA was a requirement that members of Congress and their personal staffs participate in the Obamacare exchanges to get their health insurance, instead of being covered like other legislative employees.

Alas, Congress still doesn't have to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

[Ugh]

One wonders what Cruz will learn from this experience.

[Countme-In]

He just dropped in to see what pre-existing condition his pre-existing condition was in.

[Countme-In]

What will he learn?

Once the Supreme Court guts the thing and the Republican congress ruins the rest of it root and branch, multimillionaire Cruz and his tony Wall Street wife will get themselves and their kids back onto a gold plated corporate plan of some kind while 12 million Americans, some terminal, are left to die.

He' s a murderer taking part in a sadistic stunt to taunt the soon to be murdered.

He's like a Nazi hopping the express train to Treblinka in mock solidarity with the Jews and then disembarking before arrival and shouting so long suckers.

I hope his next gold-plated health plan covers bullet wounds, the sadistic pig.

.

[Ravi]

Wow. Much as I find it adorable, it looks like a completely unforced error to me.

His wife is leaving her job to work on the campaign, right? If she's working on the campaign, the campaign could compensate her. That compensation could include covering (or at least contributing an employer percentage) to her COBRA payments to maintain her previous insurance. It seems like a completely reasonable campaign expenditure to avoid bad optics of "signing up for Obamacare".

Of course, the optics of his family getting a sweetheart deal from the campaign aren't necessarily good either. But I think that's fixable too - they just need to make it a general policy. And make sure some people other than his wife qualify. Something like: If you're losing health insurance because you're coming to work on the campaign and you're eligible for a subsidy / Congressional employee contribution on an ACA exchange, the campaign will cover COBRA payments so you aren't pressured to sully yourself with any of that evil Obamacare stuff.

In fact, I'd turn around and give that a positive spin: Cruz's campaign goes the extra mile to protect campaign workers from the evils of Obamacare! Handled correctly, I'd imagine you could get the other Republican campaigns to trip all over themselves to match or beat that.

[Ravi]

Or, even simpler, since he's not taking the Congressional employer contribution anyway, he could just get an off-exchange QHP. Millions of people are on them ( http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2015/01/20/open-enrollments-missing-persons/ ), why not Ted Cruz?

[sanbikinoraion]

I campaign for higher taxes; that doesn't mean I actually donate extra taxes now. Surely it is entirely reasonable to utilize the benefits available to you by law even if you don't think that they should be in law?

[Brett Bellmore]

"why not Ted Cruz?"

Because Obamacare insurance isn't merely available to members of Congress. They're actually legally required to go through the federal exchange, if they're not already otherwise insured.

One of those mandates in the law. He would have had to have performed some fairly complex legal gymnastics to avoid it, which would, quite fairly, have been held against him.

[thompson]

I agree with both wj and sanbikinoraion. It's going to be used against him during the campaign, and its also a relatively stupid and irrelevant thing to use against him.

[russell]

I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that his wife could simply have extended her employer provided coverage via COBRA. So, probably no gymnastics.

sanbi, yes, Ted Cruz is perfectly entitled to enroll in ACA coverage. It'a just funny, for obvious reasons.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

And Cruz certainly isn't getting a subsidy on his ACA coverage, so the Supreme Court ACA Troofer case doesn't affect him.

[Countme-In]

What's next, will Congress be required/mandated like all other employers to pay Cruz unemployment benefits once his demagogic rear end is voted out of the Senate -- unless he somehow leaves feet first.

This requirement/mandate that Congress and staff must have only Obamacare available to them rather than their FEHB employer health plan is unlike any other requirement for any other American employee or employer of more than 50 employees.

As alluded to above, it was poisonous language inserted into the legislation by Grassley and the rest of the feral, damaged, damaging , polpot cadre children who wreck everything they touch in this country. Reid, like a parent fed up with feral, verminous children pouring gasoline over themselves and flinging matches around, let it stand for the mere spectacle of it.

It was done in mock solidarity with those who sign up for Obamacare because they had no other choice, having been deliberately shut out of affordable coverage by a sh"thead healthcare regime since progressives from Teddy Roosevelt thru Truman and on down were called commies for trying extend coverage to the sick, poor, and dying in this healthcare gulag allowed to persist for the past 100 years.

The only solidarity won was with the Republican base, and base it is, consisting of jagoffs, a@sholes, sadists, scenery chewers, armed exhibitionists in tricorner habidashery, and chronic masturbators who shove their heads as far up their keesters as possible in fits of self-dramatization and then call the hallucinations inside their fundaments the sacred light of Jesus and Ayn Rand and that early colonial gay porn star, Tench Coxe, who was known to pack a hydrogen bomb when selling arms to the British royalists, the traitor, not that there is anything wrong with his film career.

The man had a huge second amendment.

[Ravi]

Here is the actual language that is commonly understood to require members of Congress and their staff to use the health insurance exchanges:

"The only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act)."

(source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/25/no-congress-isnt-trying-to-exempt-itself-from-obamacare/ )

Brett, I'm sure an ardent textualist such as yourself can easily explain how language that, on its face, only imposes a restriction on the federal government somehow prevents Ted Cruz from calling up Aetna or Blue Cross or whoever and buying whatever damn off-exchange health plan he wants with his own damn money (or, in the alternative, point to other language that imposes this restriction). Bonus points if you can explain how this (or any other) language prevents Ted Cruz's wife from buying whatever off-exchange family health plan she wants that would, incidentally, cover Ted Cruz (without resorting to penumbras and emanations, of course).

Bottom line: Ted Cruz has multiple options to get health insurance that would comply with the individual mandate without going anywhere near the health exchanges. If he chooses to use them anyway, that says a lot about him and the seriousness of his anti-Obamacare crusade.

[Tony P.]

Evidently, Ted Cruz has decided that he is not rich enough to go without health insurance.

I don't know how wealthy he and the missus are, but United States Senators and Goldman Sachs Managing Directors are surely much better positioned than your average family to risk going uninsured. If even the Cruzes, who have every political incentive to stand on principle and refuse to bow to the oppressive ACA mandate, are unwilling to forgo health insurance, then maybe the mandate to have it is no more oppressive than a mandate to wear clothes in public would be.

--TP

[sanbikinoraion]

> armed exhibitionists in tricorner habidashery

This was lovely, Countme-In -- you must have an excellent speechwriter.

[Barry]

Adding on to Tony - how much does a partner at G-S make? $1 million? $2 million? And that's before the extra special 'absolutely not because your husband is a Senator' not-at-all-corrupt special bonus plan.

She should be able to afford anything she wants.

In addition, he's a sitting Senator (and Harvard lawyer with significant legal epxerience and connections); she's a partner at the biggest, most powerful financial mafia family. Any insurance company who screws them over will regret it.

[Barry]

"But, still, he didn't forego his employer paid health care, just to avoid the Federal exchange. Which is rather different from going out of his way to get into the Federal exchange."

Posted by: Brett Bellmore

I'm sorry, but could you rewrite that in coherent English, please?

[Barry]

Brett: "Because Obamacare insurance isn't merely available to members of Congress. They're actually legally required to go through the federal exchange, if they're not already otherwise insured."

Do you even read what you are writing?

[wj]

It also appears that several other (Republican) members of Congress have opted to buy their own insurance outside the Obamacare exchanges.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/12/09/whats-congress-doing-about-its-own-health-care/

So, rather clearly, Cruz could have done so, too, if he really wanted to. And, if he did so, he would be in compliance with the part of the law that requires him to have insurance (or pay a penalty). And yet, he has apparently decided to use the exchange.

[russell]

And yet, he has apparently decided to use the exchange.

Maybe he'll have some kind of weird road-to-Damascus epiphany and come over to the Kenyan Muslim community-organizing nanny-state socialist dark side.

Now, that would be funny.

He'd have to keep it from his old man, though, or Thanksgiving dinner would be no fun at all.

[byomtov]

I doubt the Cruz family Thanksgiving dinner is much fun to begin with.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"I doubt the Cruz family Thanksgiving dinner is much fun to begin with."

Do they celebrate US Thanksgiving (4rd Thursday in Nov) or the Canadian Thanksgiving (2nd Monday in Oct) or the Cuban 10 October holiday?

[Barry]

It will be utterly unsurprising but demoralizing to watch the 'liberal' MSM deal with the Cruz Birther issue.

My predictions are:

1) This will be treated as a settled issue.
2) Those who question his citizenship status will be treated as wrong, and only mentioned in terms of being wrong.
3) No major outlet will use the excuse 'people are talking about it, so it's a legitimate issue'.

[Model62]

His wife works for Goldman Sachs?

That alone would seem to disqualify him from the Tea Party ticket. But whatevs, I guess.

[Barry]

Model62: "His wife works for Goldman Sachs?

That alone would seem to disqualify him from the Tea Party ticket. But whatevs, I guess."

It's amazing how the Tea Party - which the liberal media and their own words assure us to be highly populist - keeps acting so oddly. A candidate from Princeton/Harvard, with a Goldman Sachs wife certainly couldn't be a Tea Partier.

[Countme-In]

Since conservatives claim that government should be run like business, what I don't get is why, after forcing the Obamacare mandate on members and their staff and their employer -- me --- they didn't move immediately to limit the number of Senators and House members and their staff to 49 employee units only, and in total between the two chambers, to avoid the employer mandate.

Couldn't Louis Gohmert and his staff be cut to 30 hours a week with no overtime to save money and meet their own ideological imperatives?

Sausage makers, like pizza joints, are businessmen too, aren't they?

[Countme-In]

A Republican Arizona lawmaker wants a national law forcing church attendance on Sundays.

This would force a moral rebirth and take us back to the 1950s.

She makes a good point that businesses were closed on Sundays back then by and large, but capitalists lobbied governments to crowd out the religious charity reserved for the day of rest so folks could shop and be forced to work the Sunday shift.

Well, her point was the first clause in that sentence, and I intervened with a charitable contribution of my own.

I propose that liquor stores be open all day Sunday, so that the blind can charitably lead the blind and the rest of us can be left to be forced to watch football on our cellphones in church.

No link. Linking on my IPad is beyond my patience.

It occurs to me that the business advertising model on the Internet is a crowding out of the charity that the free internet once was.

In fact, when the government employees who invented the rudiments of the Internet and gave it away to the American people and the world to use as the latter see fit, what we have is the greatest act of charity in history.

You parasites.