I did a double take when Ted Cruz said this

Congress returns this week with one last chance before the summer recess to pass a health care plan.

But they can’t agree. The closest thing to a compromise is what Senator Ted Cruz calls his Consumer Freedom Plan.

“The consumer should be able to choose what health care they want to buy. If you want to buy a plan with all the bells and whistles, you can buy that plan. Those plans will be on the market. Those plans will have significant federal taxpayer money behind them. But on the other hand, if you can’t afford a full Cadillac plan, you should be able to buy another plan that meets your needs.”

Those would likely be stripped-down plans, which would appeal to younger healthier people.

“You would see some younger and healthy consumers choose to go to go freedom plans that have much lower premiums.”

But that means the sick people would pile on to the government plan, driving the costs up. But Cruz has a way to pay for it — it’s in sharp contrast to what Obamacare tries to do.

“Here’s what Obamacare does: It takes tens of millions of young healthy people and it jacks up their premiums and takes all that extra money, not for them, but to cross-subsidize people who are sick. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that makes sense,” Cruz said. “I’d much rather use direct tax payers funds. Let’s use Warren Buffets taxes and not 30-year-old struggling and just beginning her career. It’s wildly unfair.

I did a double take when I heard that because Cruz is a Conservative Republican and he’s saying let’s use direct taxpayer money to subsidize, basically, sick and poor people. It’s an income transfer from rich people to not-so-rich people.

The only problem is the current plan actually cuts taxes on wealthy people, but if he can change that detail, sounds to me like it’s something Democrats could go for.

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