Free Republic

he state uses an army of certified agents to guide around 40% of the people who enroll in Covered California, the state’s subsidized health-care system. And like any army, this one would like to get paid. That hasn’t been happening. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that many of the 12,600 insurance agents haven’t been paid for months. Around 2,200 agents are owed around $2 million for shepherding Med-Cal patients through the system and the state doesn’t intend to pay them before January. These are probably the wrong people to piss off at the beginning of Covered California’s second...

The White House is tired of hearing about Jonathan Gruber’s comments. Everyone is getting “pretty tired of relitigating” Gruber's comments — everyone except Republicans, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. Gruber’s comments that the Affordable Care Act was passed because of the “stupidity” of the American voter is not shared by “anybody at the White House,” Earnest said, adding very few Americans are paying attention to the narrative. “Some Republicans are fanning the flames of those old political arguments because it's politically advantageous. It's easier for them to talk about six-to-eight-year-old videos than to talk about how the...

Before he became the Obama administration's least favorite overpaid expert, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber was its darling. He appeared in an Obama campaign ad saying, "I helped (Massachusetts) Gov. (Mitt) Romney develop his health care reform, or Romneycare, before going down to Washington to help President Obama develop his national version of that law." The false portrayal of Romneycare and Obamacare as practically identical fueled the Democratic delusion that Congress had drafted the Affordable Care Act to appeal to rascally Republicans. Now Gruber is in the doghouse because he was captured on video being brutally honest. In 2010, Gruber told...

..."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. ...

Sen. Sanders was asked about the new ACA sign up numbers on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) said, “It tells us that you have a program that is working well. That they have overcome the problems that they initially had. It tells me that about seventy-five percent of the people on the exchanges think that the healthcare they are getting is good, and I think this is making our Republican colleagues very nervous.” Sanders summed up the entire Republican philosophy, “What these guys want to do is to tell the American people,’Hey you think government can do something...

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,...

A Massachusetts Health Connector spokeswoman rolled her eyes when asked if the Patrick administration stands by embattled board member Jonathan Gruber, insisting state officials aren’t paying attention to the national firestorm. “Some of your colleagues saw me roll my eyes,” spokeswoman Kim Haberlin told a Herald reporter who asked about Gruber during a press event. Haberlin said there are no plans for Gruber to leave the board. “No, not at this time,” she said. “We’re focused on the next person getting into coverage.” Obamacare czar Maydad Cohen, Health Connector Executive Director Jean Yang and Secretary of Health and Human Services...

The epic search of the Greek philosopher Diogenes for an honest man is finally over. His name is Jonathan Gruber, and he is an MIT economist once known as an intellectual architect of Obamacare, although his status is being rapidly downgraded by the law’s supporters with every one of his uncomfortably frank utterances about President Barack Obama’s signature initiative. Video surfaced of Gruber saying at a panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania last year that the law was written in a deceptive, nontransparent way to exploit “the stupidity of the American voter.” Gruber swiftly went on MSNBC to explain...

Internal checks determined the state Healthplanfinder website was miscalculating the amount of tax credits applicants were eligible for. So exchange officials decided to shut the site down for repairs. They hope to have it back up on Sunday. “It’s our plan to be up as soon as possible,” said Michael Marchand, communications director of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, which operates Healthplanfinder. By early evening Saturday, the exchange issued a release saying it is expected to be back online by 8 a.m. Sunday. The tax-credit calculations are critical to the site’s utility. Based on an applicant’s income level, the credits...

President Barack Obama says the American public was not misled about certain provisions of his health care law. A newly surfaced video shows an adviser in the law's drafting, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, saying "the stupidity of the American voter" helped Democrats pass the complex legislation. Gruber made the comment in 2013 but it is adding to conservatives' current call to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

In its briefs before the District Courts,the Appellant Courts, and ultimately before the Supreme Court did the Obama Admin lie? And if they lied and misrepresented its case, Could the court vacant its decision? I understand a party in a legal action has the right to present its view of the world, but is it knowingly misrepresenting a position in Court and in legal documents grounds for disbarment?

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year — in some cases as much as 20 percent — unless they switch plans. The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015. An analysis of the data by The New York Times suggests that although consumers will often be able to find new health plans with prices comparable to those they now pay, the situation varies greatly from state...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. New Yorker article from October 2013 - during the Healthcare.gov meltdown - that says Obama had a private meeting with Jonathan Gruber in Boston. LINK HERE

Remember those "other" new Obamacare exchanges—the ones that small businesses were supposed to use to sign up workers for health insurance? A new Government Accountability Office report finds that a stunningly low number of workers have enrolled in insurance plans sold on small-business health exchanges run by federal and state governments. As of last summer, only about 76,000 people working for about 12,000 employers had enrolled in insurance plans sold by 18 state-run SHOP exchanges. One state-run SHOP—Mississippi's—had just one person enrolled, the GAO report said. Washington state had the second-lowest enrollment with 42 people. Two population-heavy states, California and...