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.
“Grubering” is like the guy who greets his wife at 3 a.m. and says, “I can explain the lipstick on my collar, dear ... I used my shirt to wipe my pecker!”
Congressional Hearings with this guy? Why? What could you possibly expect to get from him after his expected answers will have been rehearsed over and over again?
Forget it. This guy has said enough “unchained” and in frankness to hang the whole crowd. Hearings would be worthless.
Just keep playing him over and over again in his own unguarded words. He’s a damned gold mine.
Yes, crime.
I do not think any of what this guy is saying is reaching the surface awareness that 0bamacare is an organized criminal enterprise...not just socialist.
Gruber, Obamacare, and RICO all Went Golfing Together...(Vanity)
Gruber is running around essentially boasting about how he got away with one of the biggest rip-offs in history! We do not need a hearing on the Hill ...he needs to be taken to court!
Lol....especially Barky’s silhouette.
He also said in that video (I listened to all 52 minutes several days ago) at approx 2:30 into the vid taped at Noblis, that 250 million Americans were HAPPY with their healthcare and that ‘they couldn’t take away something from 250 million people to help 50 million people’.
Also that the people who receive Employer healthcare don’t know that ‘their healthcare is crumbling’ and what the end goal is controlling healthcare costs by controlling procedures. The ACA funds ‘research’ that studies how effective procedures are for people (i’m assuming that they break down by age, sex, melanin content, etc) and if the procedure isn’t warranted (as per the research) tough cookies, it isn’t paid for. It goes on and on with the Govt. Nanny State. I took copious notes. This guy is extremely difficult to listen to without trying to take notes. UGGGG
“congressional Republicans threatening to hold hearings
they have best make good on those threats.
“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”
Yes fascism is alive and well. Fortunately Cable and Social media reach far more than those three cobweb networks. Gruber is all over Fox / twitter and the brunt of jokes. Those same three networks have carried water for Odunga for six years, YET look what happened on Nov. 4th.
Heh-—guy’s toxic.
Taken to court for what? He was hired to do a job, and he did it.
The people who hired him? Court is almost too good for THEM.
Stop focussing on Gruber. He's nothing.
Just because you are hired for murder doesn’t mean you are not guilty because you did it.
The man was hired to perpetuate a fraud. The people who hired him have immunity. I say bring him up on charges and make him squeal like a stuck pig.
Gruber is the socialist Michael Mann of Health Care.
Every time.......
Gruber’s model and analysis of it appears to be what’s sold to the varying states who have contracted with him to set up their exchanges. This and his contacts with the WH and HHS.
In another instance, we find that climate ‘models’ are used to predict climate and provide the basis for legislation that impacts us with taxes and fees on gas, electricity, etc.
I am looking for the third model of anything—probably finance or illegals’ impacts on government—to establish the third dot and make the straight line for myself. I am coming to believe that we are living in a controlled group of a double-blind experiment on an entire people, as though we are national lab rats to mad political scientists.
Salt the earth too.........Just to be sure.
Well, there’s always the Economists to flog for their models.
noun: gaffe · plural noun: gaffes
an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder:
“an unforgivable social gaffe”
synonyms: blunder · mistake ·
It doesn’t really match what happened.
RINO McCain. He should say it gives ammunition to repeal the law.
But of course he doesn't say that.
Wire fraud too. This guy was a consultant to many States in setting up their exchanges. Whether he should be prosecuted would be a very interesting question for our pending AG.
There are all sorts of population models that are used to justify environmental regulations and ESA listings.
My take is this: the powers that be love computer models because they can be sold as objective (they're not) and they concentrate power in DC.
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