*First appeared in the Nov. 19, 2014 edition of the Laurel Chronicle newspaper
Wonder if Jonathan Gruber regrets adhering to that old adage, “honesty is the best policy?”
You know Gruber. He’s the M.I.T. economist who told the truth about Obamacare, possibly the first supporter of the law to do so.
Here are a few nuggets from his public comments: First, the bill was written in a “tortured way to make sure CBO didn’t score the mandate as taxes,” because if the Congressional Budget Office had done that, the bill would have died. Second, “if you made a law that said healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it wouldn’t have passed, just like lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing passed.”
So why do we care what Jonathan Gruber says about Obamacare? The Washington Post said he played a “central role designing [Obamacare] and shepherding it through Congress” and also convinced the President that “a viable health care reform plan would have to include an individual mandate to buy insurance.” The New York Times has referred to him as “Mr. Mandate.” The Wall Street Journal calls him “an architect of the Affordable Care Act.”
In other words: We can take him at his word when he says the very foundation of the healthcare plan was misleading at best, an outright lie at worst.
In fact, that’s exactly what Ron Fournier (who “openly rooted for Obamacare’s successes”) called this debacle in the National Journal: “I have to admit, as a supporter, that Obamacare was built and sold on a foundation of lies. No way around it.”
Fournier’s not the only detractor – not by a long shot. Tevi Troy writes in the Wall Street Journal: “The all-too-candid MIT economist is not likely to have a hard time paying for his own health care—Mr. Gruber reportedly received $400,000 for advising the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act. But he is having a hard time explaining his unguarded comments about the law. His views may be obnoxious, but Mr. Gruber has performed a public service by finally telling the truth about ObamaCare.”
March Thiessen writes in the Washington Post that the “reason Democrats are running from Gruber is the same reason conservatives should be thanking him: Gruber has exposed what liberals really think of the American people.”
Not so fast, says President Obama. The President explained that Gruber “never worked on our staff.” (Don’t worry about the fact Gruber was paid nearly $400,000 by the Obama administration as noted above, nor the fact that he is the “intellectual author of the individual mandate,” nor the fact that he personally met in the Oval Office with President Obama and head of the Congressional Budget Office to discuss the healthcare legislation.) Even Nancy Pelosi attempted to distance herself, saying she doesn’t know who Gruber is. This seems odd, given that she referenced him personally during her comments in the Obamacare debate.
Top Democrats seem to think rational Americans like you and me will buy their flimsy excuses, will overlook their previous dealings with Gruber, and will rock on like nothing’s happened.
But what do they think we are – stupid?
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