Free Republic

They'd be better off with "less scope for choosing the wrong plan."In a 2009 paper, “Choice Inconsistencies Among the Elderly: Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program,” Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber argued that there were too many Medicare Part D plans for seniors to choose from, which led them to make bad decisions when enrolling in a plan. In the paper, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gruber wrote with Jason T. Abaluck that the privatization of the public Medicare program had resulted in dozens of private insurers offering a wide variety of insurance products...

The Overlooked Irony of Jonathan Gruber's Candid Statements MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber has been captured on a number of video recordings stating that the Democrats relied upon and exploited the “stupidity of the American voter” to pass Obamacare. But American voters are not really stupid – not most of them anyway. Even the average Democrat voter is not stupid. Rather, Democrat voters are badly misinformed because they rely on the leftist media for information and opinion. So what Gruber and the Democrats really exploited was not the stupidity of the American voter, but corrupt and dishonest reporting by leftist journalists....

The Obama administration can try to distance itself from Jonathan Gruber all it wants, but a 2012 press release from Obama’s own presidential campaign shows that when it comes to Obamacare, the president and Gruber are joined at the hip.

Business owners in Oakland prepped their storefronts in anticipation of protests over an expected grand jury decision on the police shooting of an unarmed man in Ferguson Missouri. Meanwhile, the city says it will open “healing centers” for those who remain troubled by the incident. Dion Bullock’s downtown Oakland shoe store Groupie suffered damage in a protest over the Trayvon Martin case, and fears what might happen after the grand jury’s decision on Ferguson.

<p>"....At a town hall meeting on health care on July 23, 2009 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Obama explained that the thinking of the Cadillac tax was to target plans that spend unnecessarily and excessively, thus driving up health care costs, such as a $25,000 plan, "so one that's a lot more expensive and a lot fancier than the one that even members of Congress get."</p>

Minnesota was one of the states where Jonathan Gruber, an economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was involved in the creation of the federal Affordable Care Act, helped to set up a local health insurance exchange. Gruber has come under fire for comments he made a year ago about how the federal law was passed. Video that surfaced this month showed him saying that a "lack of transparency" and "the stupidity of the American voter" were key to getting the federal law passed. He was paid $330,000 for his work in Minnesota. What did he produce? Gruber, who...

After the election drubbing his party suffered in November, President Obama now seems to be losing media support for his nakedly defiant stance on at least a couple issues.

"Revenge of the Wonks" might be a good name for the Gruber/ObamaCare fiasco, or maybe "The Wonk-in-Chief's Comeuppance." White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday claimed that ObamaCare/RomneyCare co-architect Jonathan Gruber's videotaped remarks about pulling the wool over the eyes of the "stupid" American people "are not views that are shared by anybody at the White House."

The Senate narrowly rejected legislation to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, handing a defeat to the oil industry and dealing a major blow to Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who staked her political career on the outcome. The Senate voted 59-41 for the legislation, falling one vote shy of the 60 needed for passage under the deal bringing it to the floor. But Keystone supporters insisted the defeat would be short-lived. Republican leaders are vowing to try again after they take over the chamber in January — when they will have more than enough votes to get a measure...

At the time of this writing, six “Gruber videos” have been released and “gone viral,” as they say in YouTube land. These are the videos of course, in which “Obamacare architect” Jonathan Gruber lets the cat out of the bag on the process of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, aka The Greatest Consumer Fraud Perpetrated on the American People, Ever. Of the many Gruber quotes burning up the internet, I was especially struck by this one, to which Charles Krauthammer refers in a recent article: Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget...

Has the network news been neglecting the recent comments by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber? NBC, CBS and ABC haven’t covered the story a dozen times, leading to questions of media bias, but “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd offers an understanding of why this is the case. [Snip] “It’s a political story,” said Todd on Gruber’s comments. “Network news, in general, hasn’t be covering the political back and forth of Washington a lot lately."

Watch Fox News Channel or listen to Rush Limbaugh these days and you will get a very large helping of Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor whose comments about the "stupidity" of the American people in relation to the passage of the Affordable Care Act has reignited political debate over the law. Gruber is quite clearly conservative catnip. But why? The key to understanding why Gruber has become a cause celebre -- but not in a good way -- for conservatives is that his comments about the ACA confirm two things that the right has long believed about Democrats and the...

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) proclaimed that “Congress and the Constitution grant the president broad authority to take executive action on immigration policy,” but later acknowledged to CNSNews.com that he lacks “the authority, both statutory and constitutional, to confer any permanent legal status to undocumented immigrants.”

Five congressional seats in three states remain too close to call or undecided. They are: Arizona 2nd: GOP Challenger Martha McSally leads incumbent Ron Barber by 179 votes. California 7th: GOP Challenger Doug Ose leads incumbent Ami Bera by 530 votes. California 16th: GOP Challenger Johnny Tacherra leads incumbent Jim Costa by 741 votes. Louisiana 5th: Single Democrat candidate Jamie Mayo leads with 28% of the total, but has an uphill climb against a crowded GOP field who garnered 69%. The leader was Ralph Abraham with 23%, who seems all but certain to win the December 2nd run-off. Louisiana 6th:...

Late Tuesday night, the student government at UCLA voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling on the university to divest from the State of Israel. The move, sponsored by the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, passed on the same day that two Palestinian terrorists murdered five Jews, including three Americans, as they prayed in a synagogue in Jerusalem. This is the second time that students at UCLA have voted on the topic of divestment from Israel in the last year. A similar resolution failed to pass in February on a 7-5 vote after TruthRevolt's Ben Shapiro made...

If Costa and Bera hold on, Democrats will continue their post-election hot streak — they've won all 11 races that were too close to call on election night, keeping a bad election cycle from turning into a GOP blowout.

Known for its liberal politics, Berkeley has racked up a long line of firsts over the years, from taxing sugary drinks to ditching Styrofoam takeout containers. City officials are now considering another novel plan: putting stickers on gas pumps citywide to warn consumers that burning fuel contributes to global warming. The Berkeley City Council is set to vote Tuesday to possibly move forward by early next year with the proposal, among the first of its kind in the U.S. San Francisco is drafting a similar ordinance that the city's Board of Supervisors could vote into law by next spring. Environmental...

A construction worker charged with murder for allegedly hitting and killing a 14-year-old boy crossing the street near San Leandro last week has an extensive criminal history, according to court records. In addition to the murder charge, 34-year-old Sonny Anderson is charged with evading an officer causing death, evading an officer against traffic and leaving the scene of the crash at 6:19 p.m. last Tuesday at East 14th Street and Ashland Avenue, prosecutors said. Anderson was arrested in Newark on Wednesday on unrelated warrants but was not booked on the crash charges until Monday. He has a long criminal history...

Oakland school officials, under pressure from supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, have agreed to reinstate a controversial curriculum that includes a lesson comparing the convicted cop killer to the Rev. Martin Luther King J

California Regulator Knocks Anthem, Blue Shield On Obamacare Networks By CHAD TERHUNE California finds 'significant errors' in Obamacare networks offered by two leading insurers Underscoring a persistent complaint about Obamacare coverage, a California regulator found that two major health insurers violated state law and significantly overstated the availability of doctors on their new health-law policies. More than 25% of physicians listed by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California were not taking Covered California patients or they were no longer at the location listed by the companies, according to state reports released Tuesday. The results of the five-month investigation...