Ted Cruz: Obamacare Champion

I would like to thank Sen. Ted Cruz.

Without his impassioned all-night rant on the Senate floor, fewer Americans would have access to healthcare today.

Seriously.

While only the right-wing fringe agreed with the extremist rhetoric in the Texas senator's anti-Obamacare faux-filibuster, all the media buzz about his antics served as a reminder to millions of Americans that the Obamacare launch was just around the corner. The Cruz Coalition's ensuing efforts to shut down the government to protest health reform brought further attention to the opening of Obamacare's insurance exchanges.

And so, on Oct. 1, such a tremendous number of people visited healthcare.gov to sign up for insurance that the website malfunctioned due to a traffic overload. The site, which, like many major government and corporate websites, was designed to support 50,000 to 60,000 users at a time, faced up to 250,000 users at any given moment. More than 10 million people have now visited the website, including 2.8 million people in the first day alone.

While the technical glitches are temporary, the benefits of Obamacare are lasting.
READ MORE AT MIAMI HERALD.