Examiner.com
Obamacare architect 'stupidity of the America voter' crucial for law's passage
November 10, 2014 10:01 AM MST
Jonathan Gruber on the 'stupidty of the American voter and Obamacare
AmericanCommitment
Remember when President Obama promised everyone that under Obamacare if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor, and that premiums would go down by $2,500 a year? MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the chief architects of the Affordable Care Act, has been caught on camera admitting that this and many other claims made about health care reform were lies. The administration knew they were lies, according to a Sunday story in the Daily Signal. Gruber made the admission at an Oct 17, 2013 event, around the time that the Obamacare website was crashing and burning.
Gruber said, "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass." Gruber was just confirming what many analysts of Obamacare have concluded all along that the talking points made to sell it were lies. The video is the first case of someone intimately involved in the writing of the bill admitting to this point.
The incident is not the only case in which Gruber was caught being inconveniently honest. Reason reports that he has been all over the map whether the Affordable Care Act allows for subsidies for health insurance policies in states that have declined to set up their own exchanges. He served as a consultant for various states that were setting of health care exchanges. He is on tape at a meeting in January, 2012 telling a group that unless a state set of exchanges, citizens of that state cannot offer subsidies in the form of a tax credit.
However, Gruber also said in an interview with MSNBC that the provision of the law that limited tax subsidies to state exchanges was a typeo. The writers of the law, he maintained, fully intended that they would be available for federal exchanges as well. He also suggested that he made a mistake in the January, 2012 meeting, making, in effect, a "speako." The question is a pertinent one as the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the question whether the plain language of the law that members of federal exchanges are ineligible for subsidies will prevail.
Obamacare architect 'stupidity of the America voter' crucial for law's passage
November 10, 2014 10:01 AM MST
Jonathan Gruber on the 'stupidty of the American voter and Obamacare
AmericanCommitment
Remember when President Obama promised everyone that under Obamacare if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor, and that premiums would go down by $2,500 a year? MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the chief architects of the Affordable Care Act, has been caught on camera admitting that this and many other claims made about health care reform were lies. The administration knew they were lies, according to a Sunday story in the Daily Signal. Gruber made the admission at an Oct 17, 2013 event, around the time that the Obamacare website was crashing and burning.
Gruber said, "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass." Gruber was just confirming what many analysts of Obamacare have concluded all along that the talking points made to sell it were lies. The video is the first case of someone intimately involved in the writing of the bill admitting to this point.
The incident is not the only case in which Gruber was caught being inconveniently honest. Reason reports that he has been all over the map whether the Affordable Care Act allows for subsidies for health insurance policies in states that have declined to set up their own exchanges. He served as a consultant for various states that were setting of health care exchanges. He is on tape at a meeting in January, 2012 telling a group that unless a state set of exchanges, citizens of that state cannot offer subsidies in the form of a tax credit.
However, Gruber also said in an interview with MSNBC that the provision of the law that limited tax subsidies to state exchanges was a typeo. The writers of the law, he maintained, fully intended that they would be available for federal exchanges as well. He also suggested that he made a mistake in the January, 2012 meeting, making, in effect, a "speako." The question is a pertinent one as the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the question whether the plain language of the law that members of federal exchanges are ineligible for subsidies will prevail.
