Remember how Jonathan Gruber, a major architect of Obacare, from the White House’s side, said he “regretted” what he said in the first video release? I wonder what he feels after the release of the second, third, and now forth video? Anyhow, it’s good to see someone in the MSM do their job, in this case, Jake Tapper, one of the more honest journalists out there (video is here. Watch it before CSPAN sends it down the memory hole)
(CNN) As Congress voted on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2010, one of the bill’s architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, told a college audience that those pushing the legislation pitched it as a bill that would control spiraling health care costs even though most of the bill was focused on something else and there was no guarantee the bill would actually bend the cost curve.
In recent days, the past comments of Gruber — who in this 2010 speech notes that he “helped write the federal bill” and “was a paid consultant to the Obama administration to help develop the technical details as well” — have been given renewed attention. In previously posted but recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an “exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” taking advantage of voters’ “stupidity” to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.
In this fourth video, Gruber’s language is not as stark as in three previous instances, but his suggestion that Obamacare proponents engaged in less-than-honest salesmanship remains.
“Barack Obama’s not a stupid man, okay?” Gruber said in his remarks at the College of the Holy Cross on March 11, 2010. “He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn’t actually care that much about the uninsured….What the American public cares about is costs. And that’s why even though the bill that they made is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control. How it’s going to lower the cost of health care, that’s all they talk about. Why? Because that’s what people want to hear about because a majority of American care about health care costs.”
He discusses an approach where things are just thrown against the wall to see if they stick, and that they have really no idea how to control costs. He also whines about how surgeons are now really rich guys, when they were just middle class in the 1950’s ( a bit of class envy and creation of strife from a guy paid $400000 for consultation for Ocare). We where told constantly that Ocare would reduce costs. It would reduce the deficit. It would be revenue neutral. It would save a family of 4 $2500 a year. All based on lies.
How bad is this? Even Firedoglake is upset, though, to be fair, FDL has never been shy over criticizing Team Obama from the Left. Jon Walker notes how Obama criticized John McCain over some supposed plan to tax employer-based health plans during the campaign, and made it a major point. Yet, immediately after the election, Obama moved forward with a plan to tax employer-based health plans, calling them “Cadillac Plans”
While experts at the time saw through this fiction, it is refreshing to see a key architect so openly admit Democrats did it solely to con the public. Democrats embraced an idea they campaigned against, but in an attempt to trick the public they made it an even worse and needlessly more complex policy
Most of the law is worse and needlessly more complex. Democrats threw in some ideas that are popular with the American People, rather like throwing a few drops of orange juice into a bottle of Castor Oil (it used to be considered really nasty medicine in cartoons and tv shows, now they say it regrows hair), to make it more palatable, but it is mostly based on lies. Conservatives knew this. Gruber is confirming it.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
[…] Another video of Jonathan Gruber bragging about how the American people were duped when Obamacare was passed has surfaced. He seems to be pretty proud of himself. No doubt he’s been laughing all the way to the bank as he counts the money taxpayers have paid him to help craft and implement the rotten law. The Washington Times reports that Gruber was paid almost $300,000 to sing the praises of the law. But that’s just the beginning: […]