Ted Cruz Plans To Sign Up For Obamacare After Losing Blue-Chip Health Plan

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose push to defund Obamacare led to a government shutdown, now plans to get insured through the federal exchange.

“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 told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday.

Previously, Cruz had been covered under his wife’s blue-chip employer health insurance plan.

But Bloomberg reported that Heidi Nelson Cruz, a managing director for Goldman Sachs in Houston, had taken an unpaid leave from the company in order to pitch in on her husband’s presidential campaign. Cruz confirmed to the Des Moines Register that his wife took a leave from the Wall Street firm.

When the Register asked Cruz if having to purchase insurance on the federal health care exchange bothered him, Cruz sidestepped the question.

“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,” he told the newspaper, adding that he’d like still like to see Obamacare abolished.

Ironically, it’s Cruz’s fellow Republican senators that compelled him to turn to Obamacare after losing health insurance through his wife’s employer. An amendment Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) inserted into the law required all members of Congress and their staffers to purchase health insurance on the federal marketplace.