Free Republic

Jonathan Gruber was “the man” behind Obamacare, according to a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “The problem is not that Gruber helped them put Obamacare together, because he was the man,” Steve Rattner, who worked as Obama’s lead adviser in 2009 for the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “The problem is what he said in the last two weeks and how the White House has handled it,” Rattner added. Rattner said his influence was enormous. “Jonathan Gruber was, back in the day in 2009, the guru on health care,” said Rattner,...

Far more troubling, however, is the lack of disclosure on the part of the White House, the Senate, the DNC and other Democratic leaders who distributed Gruber’s work and cited it as independent validation of their proposals, orchestrating the appearance of broad consensus when in fact it was all part of the same effort. The White House is placing a giant collective bet on Gruber’s “assumptions” to justify key portions of the Senate bill, which they allowed people to believe was independent verification. Now that we know that Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is announcing a broader opt-out for religious nonprofits that object to providing health insurance that covers birth control. The administration is allowing religious nonprofits to offer coverage that does not include contraception. In such a case, a third-party issuer will handle all business related to providing birth-control coverage for women, according to a source familiar with the changes who spoke only on condition of anonymity.