Has anyone told Nancy?
Only surprise is that CNN chose to report it. If I didn’t know any better, we’re being set up for a follow-up report that puts Obama and Obamacare in a good light.
ObamaCare Architect undermines ObamaCare foundation Youtube video 1:18Published on Jul 25, 2014
Voters got to know Jonathan Gruber in 2012 when the Obama campaign put the health care policy wonk forward to shut down ObamaCare attacks from Republican nominee Mitt Romney. President Obama was so eager to play up Gruber’s role as a chief architect of ObamaCare because Gruber had been a chief architect of Romney’s state-level health law. Elevating Gruber allowed the campaign to deliver his lines with greater crack: “The core of the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare and what we did in Massachusetts are identical," says Gruber in one campaign ad. While Gruber may have helped neuter Romney’s ObamaCare attacks, he may end up helping to neuter the law itself thanks to a video unearthed by free-market think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Gruber, an MIT professor who has become a Democratic health care talking head, also gets paid for talking to industry groups about ObamaCare. In one 2012 speech, Gruber talked about the provision in the law that has state governments administer enrollments, including subsidies. “I think what’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits,” said Gruber, a MIT professor, in a speech two years ago. Why is that problematic? Because it directly contradicts what the administration argued in court about a lawsuit that could be “devastating” to ObamaCare because it would end the subsidies paid to enrollees in the states that did not voluntarily comply.
The preferred talking point for pro-administration groups has been to dismiss the subsidy gap as a clerical error, not an intentional policy. It goes like this: Congress meant to provide a way to work around non-compliant states, but didn’t get the wording right. It was, in the words of one administration insider deployed to knock down the court decision, a typo. And who was that insider? You guessed it: Jonathan Gruber. This matters not because it is an embarrassing deception for an academic to be caught in, but because it suggests the falsity of the administration’s claim that this was a glitch and not a feature. The administration was eager to highlight Gruber’s role in order to shame Romney, making it hard now to suggest that he was some peripheral figure. Whether this matters in the expected Supreme Court decision is a matter for the legal eagles to consider, but from a messaging point of view this is a Krakatoa-sized eruption.
The plan pretty plainly was to do on subsidies what the administration has tried to do on Medicaid expansion: pressure governors who do not comply and create talking points for Democratic candidates. It’s just that so many states refused to set up their own ObamaCare shops, including those with supportive governors. The rest of the actual glitches in the law and technology made even some liberal governors opt out and kick the can back to Washington. If the White House can’t argue publicly that this is some silly technicality it goes straight to the heart of the main problem with ObamaCare and voters: they don’t think it works.
I’m actually very surprised CNN has a story on it.
Finally, someone at CNN woke up and smelled the coffee.
My, this privileged putz was really tickled with the way he fooled the rubes, wasn’t he? Worked it into every speech he gave, apparently.
Is this just another wave in the beat down of America or is there a REASON these videos have been leaked? To distract us from Amnesty? Anyone?
I hope somebody has placed Goober on suicide watch. The hits just keep on comin’! LOL! For a “perfessor” the boy sure does have a big mouth. He loves himself because he’s smarter than everyone else. We’re all dummies in his world.
My goodness videos are popping up all over the place now. At this pace we’ll end up with a DVD set with the working title of “The Best of Jonathan Gruber: America’s Filled with Idiots and Rubes Tour”.
Must be a different fourth video than the fourth video played on Fox tonight, in which Gruber, who got his start helping to write Romenycare in Massachusetts, says that the “dirty secret” about Romenycare is that it only works financially because the powerful MA senator Ted Kennedy and some other insiders figured out a way to essentially “rip off the Feds” by taking $400 million from a Washington slush fund and putting it into health care in his home state - it was because such extra money would not be available nationwide that Gruber knew that a national healthcare plan would not work without forcing people to buy in, and eventually became known as “Mr. Mandate” - it just gets better and better.....
He told Dennis, "What the Beatles were to your generation, the Bangles are to mine."
Politicians, bureaucrats, the media, et al are simply paid professional liars. Should we expect anything more?
Deflection subject away from deflation with the installed Paradigm of continual huge flow of government Exempt Ones pension/retirement market controlled by The Lobby,
Surprised CNN is reporting it.
momentary slip of the tongue, eh?
Gruber is a college professor who is supposedly dedicated to education, broadly defined. So it is disheartening and horrifying to watch him laughing it up hysterically about “fooling” the “stupid” public.
His students must love him....(not)
Honestly, — if people are as ‘stupid’ as he claims, would that not be the point in taking his classes? — to learn something?
One has to “wonder” how transparent and objective his average MIT course lecture is. Does he deliberately lie to his “stupid” students in order to ensure they vote in Democrat policies and bigger government no matter what the outcome, including fiscal insolvency, moral hazard, adverse selection and abuse of public resources?
Or, does he EDUCATE THEM — explain the pros & cons, the costs, benefits, and risks — and let them decide as better informed voters?
Economics is a subject about which anyone will benefit from studying a bit more.
Gruber betrays the public’s trust - and his duty as an economics professor - when he openly snickers and publicly dismisses the “ignorant” people he is tasked with helping educate.
If he truly had his heart in public service — instead of political gains for “his” side — he would want to publicly explain the benefits, costs, and long term effects of centralized health care services. He would genuinely desire to have the public to know ALL of the facts in an impartial manner, and help them learn about the issues openly. And then allow them to vote, based on the costs and the benefits of the proposed reforms.
Instead, he giggles about “lying” to achieve his political outcome - like an ordinary bully, con man or manipulative used-car salesman.
Gruber has betrayed his public trust as an educator committed to helping the average person learn about the important national issues confronting voters who desire to become informed.
The more I think about his conduct, the angrier I get. I am an Economics professor here in California, and strongly pro free-trade and limited government. But I come across in my classroom as impartial, objective and genuinely caring about the truth behind public policy decisions compared to this arrogant 2-year old university “professor.”
4L
