Dean Baker confuses a subsidy with a cost to taxpayers

Dean Baker is still presuming that taxes fund the federal government, or at least using it club the opposition. He gets it right in the post, calling it a subsidy and one much larger than most needy people will be getting through the ACA. The Cruzes are needy? Really?


Beat the press
Senator Cruz's Health Care Plan Costs Taxpayers $8,000 a Year
Dean Baker | CEPR

Dave Jamieson — Ted Cruz Gets His Health Insurance Through Goldman Sachs, His Wife Confirms

The wife of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) confirmed in an interview with The New York Times what the tea party star's opponents have insinuated gleefully for weeks: The most vocal opponent of Obamacare enjoys a high-priced health plan through investment bank Goldman Sachs.

"Ted is on my health care plan," Heidi Nelson Cruz, who has worked in the firm's management division for eight years, told the paper in a story published Wednesday.
Cruz's plan through Goldman appeared to be an uncomfortable fact for the conservative senator as he lambasted the health care reform law and helped drive what would become a two-week government shutdown. In an exchange during Cruz's 20-hour anti-Obamacare marathon on the Senate floor in September, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tried unsuccessfully to get Cruz to admit where he gets his own coverage.

“Will the senator from Texas for the record tell us now -- and those who watched this debate -- whether he is protected and his family’s protected?” Durbin asked.
Cruz deflected the discussion toward an uninsured diabetic woman that Durbin had been talking about earlier.

A spokeswoman for Cruz confirmed to the Times that the senator gets his coverage through Goldman. The Wall Street bank told the paper the coverage is worth at least $20,000 a year. "The senator is on his wife’s plan, which comes at no cost to the taxpayer and reflects a personal decision about what works best for their family," the spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said.

The Huffington Post
Ted Cruz Gets His Health Insurance Through Goldman Sachs, His Wife Confirms
Dave Jamieson

OMG! Cruz's wife works for Goldman? 

WTF. Is there anyone that GS doesn't have its tentacles around?