You can't judge a Crook by his cover
Posted on 11/15/2014 5:48:59 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The weeklong #GruberGate, as it has been dubbed on Twitter, comes just as the Massachusetts Health Connector prepares to relaunch its website today for open enrollment after a devastating year that saw residents struggling to sign up for health plans.
Gruber, a Connector board member, told Bay Staters on Thursday to “give us another chance,” but Archambault said the professor is the last thing the embattled panel needs as it seeks credibility.
“It does raise big questions about his ongoing involvement in Massachusetts, sitting on the board,” Archambault said.
Gruber did not return an email seeking comment yesterday and there was no answer at his Massachusetts Institute of Technology office. He has declined multiple requests for interviews this week with the Herald.
Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber — the MIT brainiac caught on video admitting the law’s “lack of transparency” was meant to dupe a gullible American public — could end up becoming Obamacare’s demolition man, with congressional Republicans threatening to hold hearings and experts saying his bombshell comments could impact the Supreme Court case challenging the Affordable Care Act.
“They can subpoena him and call him to testify about the way he used federal money because he got an awful lot of it,” said Dennis Hale, a Boston College political science professor, referring to reports yesterday that Gruber received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants to help states implement Obamacare. “If he shows up to testify, it’s going to be pretty ugly.”
“This is the gift that keeps on giving,” Hale said. “If you’re selling a product that people don’t want to buy and then tell them they’re stupid because they don’t want to buy it, you get into trouble.”
Gleeful Republicans, who will dominate the House and Senate come January, have pounced on Gruber’s comments that the Obamacare law “passed because the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post, “We may want to have hearings on this.” And Arizona Sen. John McCain said the controversy “gives us ammunition to make fundamental changes to the law.”
The Gruber firestorm comes just a week after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging whether states enrolled in the federal HealthCare.gov portal — rather than creating their own exchanges — can dole out Obamacare subsidies.
In the latest video to be released — the fourth this week — Gruber appears to make the case against the subsidies, telling an audience that if states don’t set up their own exchanges, they won’t receive tax credits.
“Justices and their clerks read the news like everybody else does,” said Joshua Archambault, a health care expert at the Pioneer Institute. “I think it will be in the back of their minds.”
In the same video, Gruber bluntly suggests the implementation of Romneycare involved Bay State bureaucrats sneakily plundering from Washington.
“The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the feds pay for our bill,” Gruber said in a Jan. 18, 2012, video. “In Massachusetts, we had a very powerful senator you may know named Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy ... and smart people in Massachusetts had basically figured out a way to sort of rip off the feds for about $400 million a year.”
Later in the video, he suggests small-business tax credits — another component of Obamacare — were crafted mainly to duck public criticism.
“That, to be honest, is political,” Gruber said. “You got to say you like small businesses in America or you’re Communist.”
The weeklong #GruberGate, as it has been dubbed on Twitter, comes just as the Massachusetts Health Connector prepares to relaunch its website today for open enrollment after a devastating year that saw residents struggling to sign up for health plans.
Gruber, a Connector board member, told Bay Staters on Thursday to “give us another chance,” but Archambault said the professor is the last thing the embattled panel needs as it seeks credibility.
“It does raise big questions about his ongoing involvement in Massachusetts, sitting on the board,” Archambault said.
Gruber did not return an email seeking comment yesterday and there was no answer at his Massachusetts Institute of Technology office. He has declined multiple requests for interviews this week with the Herald.
> Any two-bit scammer should have known better than that, but ego exceeds IQ.
How right you are and that describes the whole WH administration...
Seems this Gruber has his hand in all pieces of the healthcare pie.
http://kff.org/health-reform/state-profile/state-exchange-profiles-massachusetts/
“......Structure: The Massachusetts Health Connector was established as a quasi-governmental organization, specifically a “public entity not subject to the supervision and control of any other executive office.”
Governance: The Health Connector is governed by an 11-member Board, including four ex officio members (or designees): Secretary for Administration and Finance, Director of Medicaid, Commissioner of Insurance, and Executive Director of the Group Insurance Commission. The Governor appoints an actuary, a health economist, a representative of small business, and an underwriter. The Attorney General appoints an employee health benefits specialist, a representative of health consumers, and a representative of organized labor. Appointees cannot be employed by an insurance carrier licensed in Massachusetts.
Current appointed Board members are:
George Gosner Jr, Spring Insurance Group
Jonathon Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrés López, AJL Consultants
Louis Malzone, Massachusetts Coalition of Taft-Hardly Funds
Nancy Turnbull, Harvard School of Public Health
Celia Wcislo, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Ian Duncan, Solucia Inc.
Contracting with Plans: The Health Connector acts as an active purchaser and requires health insurance carriers offering plans through the Connector to receive the “Seal of Approval” by meeting requirements such as participation in all Commonwealth Choice offerings (meaning individual and small group) and offering all standardized benefit packages for all plan benefit levels (gold, silver, bronze, and young adult plans). Carriers may also offer non-standardized products to consumers, and the Health Connector is considering displaying these plans within the corresponding metal tiers (as suggested by an actuarial review).5 For 2013 plan year, the Connector received proposals from all eight existing Commonwealth Choice carriers and one new entrant, and granted the Seal of Approval to all standardized and non-standardized plans.......”
Great picture.
Only thing I would differ with is quite a few survived. We need a disaster picture where no one survived. We need this thing killed right down to its roots just like someone said long ago.
I agree.The country needs a complete change and the the federal bureaucracy needs to be fumigated to the GS level!
#GruberGraft
Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Let’s hope for destruction of Obamacare
So the way government works is to prop up liars by labeling them as “intellectuals.”
Then these liars put out studies based on fakery, which is then labeled “evidence based” knowledge.
zackly....
Google: Leadership | Massachusetts Health Connector "Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of ... the Quality and Cost Council and was recently elected to the board of the ...
My very first thought. Gaffes are errors - what he said and still keeps saying in these videos are the truth. Much, much different. He should be disappeared.
Damn. I hate it when someone beats me to the punch, the real story below the obvious. So I hate you....but you nailed it! (/s on the hate....:)
Think I’ll send him an email... gruberj@mit.edu
Congress, as usual, is going to f*** this up by holding hearing about Gruber’s payments (which Congress authorized and he earned) or about his comments about the stupidity of voters (look at the White House, QED).
The ONLY things that should be put on the record, and done so HUNDREDS of times if necessary, are Gruber’s confession that the subsidies were for state exchanges only (the record is clear) AND his intercourse with Pelosi and her flying monkeys indicating CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS legislative intent.
The pleadings before the Supreme Court in March 2015 had better include both of these things, or there’s a chance that Roberts will wriggle out of overturning the subsidies.
As of Saturday 11/15 the name of Jonathon Gruber has not been mentioned one time on ABC or NBC and the story got a 1 minute report on CBS late Friday.
His testimony could open a can of worms in regard to how the other billions with a "B" dollars were spent for promotion. DHS has no clue where the money went. Maybe Goober does.
Hmmmmmmm?
A prog/lib/lefty/commy/Dem speaking truth is always a gaffe.
This is sickening to every moral, reasoning, law abiding American citizen.
Time to use Rules for Radicals in spades against these anti-American cretins.
November 15, 2014
Private Obamacare investigator says more bad news coming
IOW if the states don't hire him as a consultant to set them up, they won't receive the tax credits.
What a creep. See new tag line. An orange jumpsuit is too good.
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