Progressives Had To Lie To Pass Obamacare

http://leomcneil.net/2014/11/12/progressives-had-to-lie-to-pass-obamacare/ ^ | November 12, 2014 | Leo McNeil

[LeoMcNeil]

MIT economist Johnathan Gruber is the architect of both Romneycare and Obamacare. Speaking to a group of like minded progressives last year Gruber declared that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” He went on to declare “and basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.” He’s referencing, in part, the Obamacare tax. The administration and the Democrats had to hide from the American people to true cost of Obamacare. If voters knew the cost they wouldn’t support Obamacare. Thus it had to be hidden from the public and the Democrats could hide the truth because the public is to stupid to figure it out.

Gruber has since apologized for calling voters stupid. Such an apology is hollow and meaningless. By not calling the individual mandate a tax, the Democrats saved themselves from a massive CBO score on tax costs. Had the CBO scored Obamacare with the individual mandate tax, the Democrats wouldn’t have been able to push through the law. Gruber admits that the country was lied to and he admits that progressive Democrats believe we were to stupid to figure it all out. Interestingly the public has never supported Obamacare and never believed all of the pie in the sky figures about it. The Democrats lost two midterm elections, in part because of Obamacare. In the very least flipping 64 House seats in 2010 is sufficient evidence that the public isn’t quite as stupid as the progressives believe we are.

Gruber acknowledges what we’ve always known about progressives. The ends justify the means. For people like Gruber and Obama, it’s okay to lie to the public if it’s for the right cause. In the case of Obamacare, they apparently believe this was a right enough cause to lie to the public about. Of course the individual mandate tax isn’t the only thing they lied about, they’ve also lied about how many people would actually sign up for Obamacare. For the CBO they estimated 13 million would sign up in the second year. Earlier this week they predicted 9-10 million. With fewer actually enrolled, it’s unlikely Obamacare will come anywhere near breaking even. Had the CBO scored Obamacare with fewer predicted enrollees, the cost would have been to great for the Democrats to push it through Congress. Of course who could forget Obama’s absurd claims that Obamacare would reduce premiums by $2,500 or that we would be able to keep our doctor. Like the Obamacare tax, the progressives knew all along these claims weren’t true but they claimed them anyway because the ends justify the means.

The nice thing about Obamacare is that it has exposed the progressives for the lying manipulators they are. For all the excitement around hope and change in 2008, the public has soured on big government progressiveness. Obamacare alone has given us the individual mandate tax that we were lied to about. The government couldn’t get a website up and running last year in time for their open enrollment period. It took them months to fix the problem despite having three years to build the website and despite months of claiming everything was fine. This year they’re trying to come up with contingency plans because they’re still not confident the website will be able to handle all of their anticipated traffic. Between all of the lying and incompetence, Obamacare remains as unpopular today as it was when it was passed.

No doubt the progressives will tell us everything is working out great with Obamacare. There’s no reason to trust these people, they’re admitted liars. The Obamacare house of cards is going to topple one way or another. Either the Supreme Court will rule that subsidies aren’t available to people buying on the Federal exchange (the law specifically limits subsidies to purchasers on state exchanges only) which will topple the whole law or it will collapse because insurance companies start losing massive amounts of money due to the fact that people aren’t buying policies. More specifically the right people aren’t buying policies, those being the young and healthy. Had the progressives told us the truth about Obamacare, the bill never would have passed. For them the ends justify the means but you have to wonder if the entire law collapses whether that end will be worth the means. Single payer is highly unlikely at this point and the credibility of big government progressives has been shot. In the end, will it have been worth it?

[Suz in AZ]

Sounds like fraud.
Grounds for a class action lawsuit?

[Blue Highway]

They should keep sending him bills to sign to keep him at his desk at least.

[4Liberty]

I despise the Rats.

[gogeo]

Or...it’s a Clintonesque info dump to separate Hillary from this train wreck.

[LeoMcNeil]

Governmental immunity would protect Congress. Not even the Federal Tort Liability Act could get at the government on this one.

[Blood of Tyrants]

A better idea would be to send a bill that repeals Obamacare and implements the improvements to health care insurance to actually lower the cost of insurance.

[Suz in AZ]

Can’t see it exempting Gruber or MIT.

[LeoMcNeil]

You can’t hold Gruber legally responsible simply because he lobbied for a bill. Even if he wrote the bill and advocated it directly to Congress, at the end of the day it is Congress that is responsible for passing the bill not Gruber.