Obamacare Has a New Customer: Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the chief opponents of Obamacare in Congress, will sign up for health insurance under Obamacare while he runs for president.

According to the Des Moines Register, Cruz's wife Heidi will leave her job at Goldman Sachs to campaign with her husband. That report said the family had used her Goldman Sachs health plan, but in light of her plans to go on an unpaid leave of absence, the Cruz family will now rely on Obamacare.

"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 paper Tuesday.

When the law was being considered, Republicans insisted that members of Congress should have to use Obamacare, a requirement that was added to ensure Congress itself had to go through whatever Obamacare was going to impose on the American people. While millions of Americans get significant subsidies under the law, Cruz said he didn't expect to get any.

"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," he said. "Members of Congress should not be exempt."

Cruz announced Monday that he is running for president in 2016, and stressed again that he wants to repeal the entire law as soon as possible.

"I believe in 2017 a new president, a Republican president will sign legislation repealing every word of it," he told the Register. "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."