Academic Built Case for Mandate in Health Care Law (yes, mo' Gruber)

New York Times ^ | 3/18/12 | Catherine Rampell

[Riflema]

..."He also serves on the Massachusetts board that oversees the state’s new health care exchanges.

Along with these credentials, Mr. Gruber’s position as an adviser to the influential Congressional Budget Office also left him perfectly positioned to advise the White House on health reform.

“The most important arbiter of everything was the C.B.O.,” said Neera Tanden, who was a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. ...

[Riflema]

In the body of this standard love note to Mr. Wonderful, we find this interesting tidbit. Gruber was an adviser to the CBO while advising the prezzie. Hold on, wind back the tape. Wasn't part of his famous quote that they basically had to scam the CBO's scoring of this crap to get it passed? Guess it's simple when you work for both parties. This guy is a real piece of work.

[Pollster1]

It’s a sad commentary on Obamacare that even with a biased compulsive liar providing the numbers for CBO, they still had to have ten years of taxes to pay for six years of Obamacare “benefits”. The misnamed “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” may be the most destructive and most dishonest piece of legislation in the history of our country - quite an accomplishment.

[loveliberty2]

"Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition, that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty, by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties ten fold; and those who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed. It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." - See "Letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785," in Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1984), pp. 814-815.

[Da Coyote]

I really hate the term “academic” when it is applied to such idiocy.

Academic is physics, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, medicine.

Pseudo-academic is sociology, political “science”, a great deal of the economics profession, etc.

Pure B.S. is the vast majority of “studies”.

And below all of this is journalism...a once honored profession.

[Riflema]

The whole shameful edifice is built on lies. Generally not a problem for a government program, but I wonder if this might just be the exception to the rule?

[Grampa Dave]

"Grubertopia: a far away mythical land where Obamacare actually works."

Pictured below is what the brain of the GruberCare voters in Congress looks like when examined.

[Jacquerie]

It takes a certain sort of mental sickness to rest easy at night knowing that one has helped demolish a nation and society.

To profit from public suffering such as this is a high crime. Gruber should swing, and I don't mean with his neighbors.

[aquila48]

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[Gay State Conservative]

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[Pollster1]

Medicare and Medicaid could be sold as providing medical care to the poor and elderly. Even those who think it’s not the government’s role can see them as having some positive value, since they actually do as promised.

Obamacare was literally sold as providing birth control to a woman so sociable that she allegedly went through $3k a year in condoms and needed subsidized birth control to afford her intense hobby - a much tougher sell to any sensible person. While no reasonable person wants Sandra Fluke to reproduce, surely the guys lining up outside her door can chip in to pay their own recreational expenses. The social benefit from Obamacare, even ignoring the huge costs, is so trivial that no one cares. It’s a naked power grab, which makes the lack of any truthful justification a real problem.

[Riflema]

A power grab, and as the good “doctor” has blurted out, a redistributive tax.