This Peek into the Mind of a Washington
Insider Shows What Liberals Really Think of the American Public
The Affordable Healthcare Act, Obamacare, was
cobbled together in secret by a group of Washington insider healthcare and
economic policy consultants. Their aim was to write the healthcare bill so it
would accomplish the administration’s goals, pass Congress, and be palatable to
the American public. Last week we got a peek into the process through the mind
of one of these Liberal consultants, and it wasn’t pretty.
Jonathan Gruber, 49, is a professor of
economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a research
associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he directs the
Health Care Program. He’s on the staff of both the Journal of Public Economics
and the Journal of Health Economics. Last year, Gruber was a member of a panel
and spoke at the University of Pennsylvania 2013 Annual Health Economics
Conference, and a video that just came to light shows Gruber at the conference
saying this:
This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure
CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If [Congressional Budget Office] scored
the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms
of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are
going to pay in -– you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people
get money — it would not have passed… 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.
And it’s the second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could
make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not. A few days ago Gruber tried to backtrack, telling Rowan Farrow on MSNBC:
The comments in the video were made at an academic conference. I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.
One can only imagine how much he regrets saying what he really believed, out loud and on videotape. Unfortunately for Gruber, reporters are now pouring over obscure remarks he made on other occasions, and what they are finding is a pattern of contempt for voters and for Congress. Gruber’s remarks have incited rage among Conservatives, and we’re guessing his Liberal clients are at this very moment deleting him from their Rolodexes.
The state of Vermont just paid Gruber $400,000 to help write their statewide healthcare plan, but already there is an outcry to pull him from the project.
How Does It Feel to Know You’re Being Watched Right Now?
Comments
Gruber’s confession only confirmed to
dishonesty and hypocrisy we saw as we watched the Obamacare legislation moving
through the Congress. This law should be repealed and replaced by state laws.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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