Ted Cruz to sign up on Obamacare exchange

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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks in Lynchburg, Va., on Monday as he kicks off his presidential campaign. (H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY)

Ted Cruz, one of the loudest critics of Obamacare, will soon be using it for health insurance coverage.
“We will presumably go on the exchange and sign up for health care, and we’re in the process of transitioning over to do that,” Cruz, a Republican candidate for president, told The Des Moines Register Tuesday.
Cruz’s wife, Heidi, is going on an unpaid leave of up absence from her job at Goldman Sachs to join Cruz full time on the campaign trail, Cruz told the Register.
Bloomberg was first to report that Heidi Cruz has taken the leave, which means Cruz, who has boasted about not needing to receive government health care benefits, will no longer be covered under his wife’s health insurance plan.
Cruz confirmed that to the Register.
The exchanges became law under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. They’re an online marketplace where small businesses, people who carry their own coverage, and the uninsured can buy health insurance.
The public marketplace is the only place where moderate-income Americans can obtain policies that qualify for Obamacare subsidies. (Poor people can get Medicaid, which is separate.)
Cruz, as an employee of the government, will use the exchange to choose his employer-provided insurance. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley pushed through an amendment on the Affordable Care Act that requires members of Congress to obtain their coverage via the exchanges. Congress pays most of the premium. But Cruz won’t be getting any extra benefit under the Affordable Care Act that a member of Congress wouldn’t have gotten before the ACA became law.
Asked if it chafes at all to have to rely on Obamacare, Cruz told the Register: “Well, it is written in the law that members will be on the exchanges without subsidies just like millions of Americans so that’s – I think the same rules should apply to all of us. Members of Congress should not be exempt.”
But, Cruz added, he’d still like to see Obamacare repealed in its entirety.
“And I believe it will be. I believe in 2017 a new president, a Republican president will sign legislation repealing every word of it. There are a fair number of Republicans in Washington and elsewhere who have quietly and privatively given up on that fight and I have not,” he said.




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