Jonathan Chait is uncomfortable with the tone of progressive mockery.
"You signed up for your employer-sponsored health insurance" is a pretty weak gotcha to throw at Ted Cruz.
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 24, 2015
It seems like everyone on the left is making fun of Senator Ted Cruz for signing up for ObamaCare. But, is it really ObamaCare if Cruz is only accepting his employer-provided (or -sponsored) health insurance? Even if it is technically ObamaCare, is this really an analogous situation to someone who loses employer-provided health care and must seek insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges?
Are we lefties being a little too clever in calling Ted Cruz a hypocrite?
The answer is ‘no,’ not really. The mockery of Ted Cruz is basically fair.
If he wants insurance through his employer, which is his right, he has to get it through the exchanges, but his experience is still the same as anyone else whose spouse loses the family’s health coverage. You go see what is available on the exchanges and what, if any, subsidies will be available to you and your family. If Cruz doesn’t want any benefit from being a member of Congress or any kind of subsidy, nothing is stopping him or his wife from calling up an insurance company directly and getting insurance outside of the exchanges.
It’s obligatory for me to mention that the reason that Ted Cruz had to get his congressional health care benefit through the exchanges is because Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced an amendment to the Affordable Care Act compelling members of Congress to use the exchanges. He thought the Democrats would vote his amendment down, but they happily accepted it. The price for that is that, now, whenever a Republican member of Congress uses their health benefit we get to point at them, laugh, and call them hypocrites.
But it is more than just a game of Gotcha!
Members of Congress have great health benefits, and they get their insurance off exchanges used by ordinary citizens. Ted Cruz will be perfectly satisfied with his coverage but, by his own rhetoric, his whole family should be in the gravest peril.
When people lose their jobs, they can now get good insurance because of ObamaCare. That’s what Ted Cruz will be doing, and it’s what he doesn’t want tens of millions of Americans to be able to do.
Cruz deserves this mockery. It is making the points it is supposed to make, both about the politician and the health care law.
“Hypocrite,” is too nice a word for this preening, posturing, self-important, psychopathic, uber-“Christian,” demagogic, bag of scum!!!
From now on, politicians, “Christian” leaders, and regular people like Ted, should be known as “Cruz-ocrites!”
Chait sticking up for his fellow elites? I’m shocked, shocked, …. !!!
He could move to Canada and enjoy the benefits of universal healthcare.
Indeed. The Cruz family is wealthy enough not to need the subsidy. If he thinks giving people subsidies for health insurance is Communism, he doesn’t need to take it.
PS: I get that it’s not the income based subsidy in his case, it’s the employee benefit. But the point is, why shouldn’t people who don’t have an employer contribution get help?
As an aside, is Jonathan Chait the new Richard Cohen?
This is about his plan to blast Obamacare next year as something he’s experienced personally.
Make fun of him all you want now. We need a plan to head off his long play. This guy isn’t fucking around and neither should we. Please listen to this Texan and understand that this is a demagogue capable of exciting extremists to the point of violence. This is not a joke.
And I guarantee you every single one of his complaints will be about the cost-cutting measures and general incompetence of the private health plan he signed up with through the exchange.
He’ll make constant comparisons between his cost sharing and level of services under “Obamacare” with what he and his family enjoyed from their private sector plan. Never mentioning that the latter was a platinum-diamond-plus plan that cost his wife’s employer a lot more.
Absolutely crucial that we figure out how to marginalize Cruz. Terry Gross interviewed Jeffrey Toobin on Fresh Air today and while I didn’t hear all of it, what I did hear had me screaming in frustration. Toobin obviously likes the guy and must, must agree with his take on the role of government.
What “Fresh Air” should do, and I mean this, is have someone on soon who can effectively push back, while making the case for a federal government that does provide health care, for example. A government that believes in helping its citizens, particularly those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Preferably debate Jeffrey Toobin as well. When “Fresh Air” is allowing all the air in the room to be sucked up by far right extremists, we have a problem. Our message is getting buried. And, Jon Stewart ain’t helping either.
What Lacerda said. I wouldn’t start mocking him just yet. Wait for his endless accounts of his bad experiences with that Terrible Horrible Awful No-Good Obamacare.
I got curious as to how Cruz stands on the VItter Amendment, which would force members of Congress and their staffs into Exchange policies through the ACA and cut off employer contributions to the premium payments, a zombie proposal that is apparently still stalking the halls up on the Hill.
Cruz is on the record as thinking the Vitter Amendment doesn’t go far enough and should be applied to all government employees. In that sense he not only should be ruthlessly mocked for signing up on the Exchange, he should be constantly publicly pressed to refuse the premium payments that are part of his benefits package as a Senator, for himself and for his aides, who I hope publicly pants him and resign en masse for screwing around with their lives in this utterly irresponsible way.
Chait is so squishy.
Going after a muthaphucka that led the charge to SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT OVER OBAMACARE
is not only something the Democrats should do, but they MUST do.
Ask Cruz why doesn’t he just sign up for those bullshyt ideas that GOP has been pushing for alternatives.