Posted on 11/12/2014 3:48:13 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
... It looks like a shocking instance of a onetime Obama adviser saying that the administration pulled the wool over America’s eyes in advancing major legislation. That is certainly how many conservatives are interpreting it after a video of the remarks started circulating this week.
But here’s the dirty little secret: Mr. Gruber was exposing something sordid yet completely commonplace about how Congress makes policy of all types: Legislators frequently game policy to fit the sometimes arbitrary conventions by which the Congressional Budget Office evaluates laws and the public debates them.
Essentially, Congress is obsessed with the government equivalent of financial accounting standards instead of cost accounting. It structures the laws in ways that might not be very efficient but sound good on the stump. Mr. Gruber was, in an infelicitous way, expressing frustration with that state of affairs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I was wondering how long it would take the New York Times to run to Gruber’s defense. I suspect contempt toward traditional Americans in the Times’ newsroom would make even Gruber blush.
Neil Irwin and the NYT editors need remedial ninth grade civics. Where in the Constitution is the federal government granted power to take money from one segment of the citizenry and give it to another to pay for health care or any other form of welfare? Also, show me this so-called ‘welfare clause’ that is usually cited in these matters.
Gruber is wrong about Americans. Dead wrong. The facts of the law - including using the Obamacare exchange to redistribute dollars from the healthy to the sick — were withheld precisely because American voters are smart.
Armed with the truth, voters might have made Obama a one-term president. That was the fear. And on November 4, with more ACA truth filtering out every day, Americans demonstrated their intelligence in spades by voting Democrats out of Senate leadership.
On the day Obamacare is gutted by the Court or repealed by Congress, Mr. Gruber will be forced to acknowledge not only the intelligence of American voters, but also their power.
I knew it was going to be “they all do it” because it was the NY Slimes.
Funny that I don’t ever recall a Bush advisor calling the voters stupid on numerous occasions, but that is a point the Slimes doesn’t care to address.
Probably been said, but I remember those Town Halls - no one, and I mean no one - fooled the people here on FR and the TEA party.
Making that group, apparently, the smartest people in America.
Someone needs to say it.
I posted this to the NYT:
Amidst all the concern about our ‘broken’ healthcare system, it is not true that the poor were denied hospitalization for illnesses or accidents or couldn’t find any healthcare. This is a myth.
Show me the stats on people who died untreated on the streets. If there were 44 million uninsured, then a good proportion of those millions must have been untreated, no?
NO. Every local community in the country from the smallest county to the largest city had clinics and hospitals for treatment of the poor who had no insurance. And these healthcare programs did not discriminate against anyone, regardless of their citizenship status.
Their healtcare costs were usually based on their ability to pay, but even the poorest had access to care. I myself was on the Harris County healthcare plan for a time and found the healthcare to be excellent if sometimes slow because of the huge numbers of participants.
Taking care of indigent patients was handled expeditiously and wonderfully well at the local community level under our old system. We have traded off something that worked for the uncertainties of a much more costly system for the taxpayers and a system that will be controlled by a new bureaucracy that will enrich and perpetuate itself.
yes, i see now
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3226451/replies?c=4
we all need to gruber each other more, so we can make ourselves feel better about the ACA (etc). lol
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