Thanks, Obama!

(Tom Toles)

From the Los Angeles Times:

United States Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination, has revealed on the campaign trail that his family is no longer covered by health insurance.

Naturally, he blames the Affordable Care Act: "I’ll tell you, you know who one of those millions of Americans is who’s lost their health care because of Obamacare? That would be me," he told an audience in Manchester, N.H., according to Politico. "I don’t have health care right now."

If you pay attention, however, you'll discover that Cruz's quandary is entirely his own fault. His, and his Republican colleagues in the Senate.

The details are pretty funny, especially if you already know what a lying piece of crap Ted Cruz is.

First, Cruz is a U.S. Senator. Why isn't he covered by health insurance at work, like most Americans? 'Obamacare' was never meant to apply to workplace coverage. It doesn't change anything about that.

Well, that was the Republican Party playing games. So now, members of Congress and their staffs are required to get health insurance through the exchanges of the Affordable Care Act.

Still no problem, right? Why didn't Cruz do that? Well, he just missed the deadline. It was entirely his own fault. He didn't sign up by December 31st, so now he and his family won't be covered until March 1st. Thanks, Obama! LOL

There's more. He claims that his new plan raises premiums by 50%, but that can't possibly be true, because no plan in Texas does that. But that's not the funny thing. This was, after all, substituted for his employer's plan (because of his job in the U.S. Senate), so the government - like most employers - pays 75% of the premiums.

Except, the grandstanding Ted Cruz declared that he wouldn't accept that. Thus, when he's complaining about the cost, it's all his own fault.

As the article says:

Cruz's lament is sadly typical of Congressional critics of Obamacare, including former Speaker John Boehner, who made the claim back in 2013 that his insurance rates had "spiked" because of Obamacare. It was just as bogus as Cruz's complaint, as we demonstrated here. Former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., claimed in 2014 that Obamacare had cost him his cancer doctor. Typically, his office refused to provide any details, including why the 65-year-old Coburn was using an ACA plan instead of Medicare.

That's the state of Obamacare criticism on the GOP side of the aisle. They insist they want to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Since they can't offer any legitimate reasons to do so, they're stuck with making them up.

Edit: And it turns out that this whole thing was a lie, anyway. Cruz and his family do have health insurance. They never lost it. Apparently, the whole thing was just a lie designed to appeal to low-information Republican voters. Well, that's Ted Cruz for you.

Is it any wonder that even his Republican colleagues hate him? Pretty much everyone who knows him, hates him (Craig Mazin, his former college roommate, in particular).

(Mike Luckovich)