Judiciary Committee member U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has made his opposition to the Affordable Care Act crystal clear by voting time and again to repeal the health care law and by supporting California v. Texas, the Trump administration’s lawsuit to completely dismantle the health care law. If successful, the lawsuit would throw our entire health care system into chaos by ripping away health care from more than 20 million Americans and ending protections for more than 135 million people with pre-existing conditions, all in the middle of an ever-worsening pandemic. Senate Republicans are rushing to confirm anti-ACA Judge Amy Coney Barrett in hopes she will help them accomplish their decade-long goal of eliminating the law — and the protections it provides for Americans — when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in California v. Texas one week after the election.
What’s At Stake If The Supreme Court Overturns The ACA
If Trump’s lawsuit to overturn the ACA is successful, 1,958,000 Texans would lose coverage.
Without the ACA, 11,898,500 Texans with pre-existing conditions could be charged more or denied coverage altogether.
A Walk Down Memory Lane: Senator Cruz And The ACA
Cruz has voted FOUR TIMES to fully repeal the ACA.
2018: Ted Cruz Said It Was “Reasonable” To Argue ACA’s Pre-Existing Conditions Rules Are Now Unconstitutional. “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as vociferous an Obamacare critic as you’ll find, sounds on board with the latest legal challenge to the health care law that could lead to protections for people with preexisting conditions being found unconstitutional. Cruz told Vox that he thought the Justice Department’s position in the lawsuit, that the law’s rules on preexisting conditions should be invalidated along with the individual mandate, was ‘reasonable’ and defended the foundation of the case being brought by his home state of Texas in a brief interview at the Capitol.” [Vox, 6/15/18]
2018: Ted Cruz: “We Need To Finish The Job” On Obamacare. “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Wednesday said Republicans needed to ‘finish the job” on repealing and replacing Obamacare in 2018, and he is pushing his colleagues to use one last reconciliation bill before the midterms to deliver on their long-running promise… ‘The biggest unfinished task is Obamacare,’ Cruz said, reflecting on what Congress did in 2017 and his priorities for 2018. ‘We need to finish the job. I still believe it is possible to bring Republicans together. I think we got very close last time and that’s something I’m continuing to devote a lot of time trying to unite our fractious conference and build consensus to get at least 50 Republicans on the same page.’” [Washington Examiner, 1/24/18]
2013: Cruz Led The Republican Government Shut Down Over ACA Implementation. “In 2013, Cruz, along with conservatives in the House, demanded that any spending bill also delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats, who still had control of the chamber in 2013, were never going to support such a move. But enough House Republicans wouldn’t go for a funding bill that didn’t defund Obamacare, setting up a showdown that shut down government for more than two weeks. (In the end, Cruz and the conservative House faction did not win policy concessions.) Republicans were largely blamed for the shutdown. Cruz’s theatrics inspired the ire not just of Democrats, but of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who felt Cruz knew his self-righteous gambit was doomed to fail, but went ahead with it anyway to raise his own political profile at his party’s expense.” [Vox, 1/22/18]