We previously discussed the statements of Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who played a major role the ACA, or “Obamacare,” where he repeatedly endorsed the theory at the heart of the recent decisions in Halbig and King by challengers to the ACA: to wit, that the federal funding provision was a quid pro quo device to reward states with their own exchanges and to punish those that force the creation of federal exchanges. That issue will now be decided by the United States Supreme Court. Gruber caused a considerable controversy when, after he had denounced the theory as “nutty” during the arguments in Halbig and King, he was shown later to have embraced that same interpretation. Having been paid almost $400,000 as an architect of the ACA, Gruber has become a major liability in the litigation. Now Gruber is back in the news with an equally startling admission that the Obama Administration (and Gruber) succeeded in passing the ACA only by engineering a “lack of transparency” on the details and relying on “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Gruber’s remarks were made on a panel given roughly a year ago on Oct. 17, 2013. Notably, this was at the height of the tension over the ACA. While I have long supported national health care, I was critical of the sloppy drafting of the ACA, the federalism conflicts contained in the individual mandate provision, and the unsupportable claims made by the White House in selling the Act. The last concern was the subject of Gruber’s comments. Gruber told the crowd that the “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” He also said that “basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
Gruber also later states that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.) is someone who “as far as I can tell, doesn’t understand economics” while calling a staffer for Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) an “idiot.” The later reference appears to be a reference to aide William Pewen.
The specific comments on the bill are transcribed as follows:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
I was concerned that these lines were taken out of context so I watched the video below:
What is fascinating is that Gruber is open about what has long been hidden in this Administration: the lack of transparency as a tactical political vehicle. The ACA was pushed through by a muscle vote on a handful of votes while the Administration made claims that he later had to admit were misleading at best, such as the President’s repeated assurance that citizens could keep your current insurance policy if you liked it.
Gruber also admits that the Administration crafted the law to avoid it being supported by a tax despite Chief Justice John Roberts’ later decision that it was a tax. Gruber says that, while he would have preferred to be honest and open, such considerations had to be set aside in the interests of passing the law — even by less than honest means.
In a truly ironic twist, the University of Pennsylvania tried to pull back the admission on the lack of transparency by pulling the video:
It was too late. The video was out.
In fairness to Gruber, he was doing what an academic is supposed to do in honestly assessing what he believed occurred in the historic passage of the ACA. While he later sought to deny the earlier comments that he made on the state exchanges (in a less than candid moment), there is thus far no comment from him on this latest video. As in the earlier admissions, there has been little relative coverage by the mainstream media of the comments. Once again, the lack of media attention is surprising given the importance of Gruber to the ACA and the Administration.
UPDATE: Gruber went on MSNBC to say that his comments were “inappropriate” while the host insisted that his comments were misunderstood as “nuanced” observations.
Quoting Sarah Palin and Fox news? Really?
He is correct. Without the support of stupid voters, Obamacare never would have passed. Even today you will find stupid people defending it. Anything for a cause.
“It is not truth that matters, but victory.”
Adolf Hitler
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”
Adolf Hitler
“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
James Madison
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” Thomas Paine
Amazing and stupefying to me
Apparently………
== More than 50% of Americans entitled to vote think politicians intend to improve the world for the masses. ( there is not much evidence to support that belief )
== More than 58% of Americans think they are in one of the best countries in the world. ( there is not much evidence to support that belief )
== About 36% of eligible voters voted in November 2014 elections. ( They still believe that voting means anything and is a moral activity. Most people have wised up …. hopefully )
== About 99% of all media beat the warrior drums this November 11th. This date was originally called Armistice Day and commemorated the beginning of the end of WWI. It was originally about peace. Now so many talking heads salute soldiers and sympathize for those who were suckered into losing their limbs , their minds and their lives during imperialistic skirmishes.
== a majority of Americans think most problems can be solved with more police , more incarceration , more laws, more punishment.
== a majority of Americans think there are significant differences between Republicans and Democrats. ( there is not much evidence to support that belief )
== a majority of Americans think the bigger the US Gov gets, the better their lives will be. ( there is not much evidence to support that belief )
== lots of people would rather argue about how many government regulations can dance on the head of a pin …….. than face reality and factual results of big government.
== lots of people debate the merits of various politicians… as if there are significant variations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ed-gillespies-health-care-plan-would-be-worse-than-the-affordable-care-act/2014/10/17/b6dd9360-54b5-11e4-892e-602188e70e9c_story.html
Here’s an offering by the Republicans, yeah that’ll work. A health care plan worse than Obamacare.
Paul Schulte – No, my trip back to Az. had to be delayed a bit due to unforeseen circumstances, but I should be back by Thaksgiving.
I’m in a rural area of eastern Washington, with no functioning laptop and a barely functioning Android.
As the de facto “grammatical gatekeeper” of Prof. Turley’s website, I just wanted to explain some of my errors to you.
Please do not dismiss this as some kind of typical ” my dog ate the homework” type of excuse; the dog merely slobbered on my homework.
Tom Nash – actually I took your comment as a warning and went to Best Buy and bought three stylus for $20. Think they will help. I have an Android as well. 🙂 Saturday the Sun Devils are playing the Beavers in Corvallis 7:45 your time. Next week Wash St here. Of course we already demolished Udub.
Let’s see your offerings. Status quo won’t cut it.
Darren, “the 18,000 members of Physicians for National Healthcare are probably better informed on this than MOST people including you.”
😉
Max-1. The Nancy Pelosi video was posted above at 2:59.
I don’t believe this bill referenced above will be a panacea for correcting what ails the health insurance industry. There are too many issues, lack of specific costs and financing, and the complete handover of the entire health care system to a managed bureaucracy held by regional offices sponsored by the federal government.
There is no provision for cost control and makes statements that are too general to be applicable, such as the requirement that enrollment forms be limited to two pages. That is too constrained and is just one example of such.
Rather than jump on the bandwagon and declare it to be great because it represents a single payer system I believe there are far too many marketing type of slogans and ideals designed to sell this as a plausible bill that can be hailed as a political solution but in reality it is too vague, to idealistic, and insufficiently descriptive of problems to be tacked.
Rather than rely on Congress to craft the matter by legislation, it lends itself almost entirely to a fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, that can have influences other than elected representatives to make agency rules that might not necessarily be adequate to address the needs of all stakeholders in health care.
And this is where I’d post the video of Nancy Pelosi(D) saying…
… Pass the bill, then we can read it.
But I’m on the road and can’t google it right now…
Maybe someone else can post it. If anyone wasn’t paying attention then, we’re at that point of review… In fact, much of this Administration’s lack of transparency is on trial.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014, hearing before the Human Rights Committee of the UN in Geneva. I hope a law blog somewhere covers the details this Administration is accused of…
Mr Turley,
The most transparent thing about the Obama Admin. IS the lack of transparency…
Bailers, LOL! David Gruber the ambulance chaser, who does those TV commercials is certainly of the same ilk as this David Gruber.
As someone who lives in the Milwaukee television market, I can’t keep from hearing “one call, that’s all” whenever I read this guy’s name.
Phil Donahue was on Democracy Now today. I thought he was dead.
All it takes is a look @ this left wing physicians group website to see just how left they are. Click on their news releases. You see many appearances on Democracy Now and the Ed Show. This is a marginal group and not even worthy to be part of this discussion. Always evaluate the source and its conduit to the discussion. We have propagandists here and one must always remain vigilant. As Olly just pointed out, he counted on the cultists to be stupid, and they did not disappoint.
Olly, the 18,000 members of Physicians for National Healthcare are probably better informed on this than MOST people including you.
Annie – ask the members of Physicians for National Healthcare if they have office managers and bookkeepers for their practices. I am sure they are not running things on their own. And it would be interesting to see how many are in actual practice rather just joiners.
Rafflaw,
Perhaps now that Sarah Palin’s true intellect has been uncovered, she could run for President!
Squeeky,
It’s fascinating that Gruber’s target audience will double-down with Single Payer and once again prove they deserve the moniker he gave them.
Regarding this bill. I have only a few minutes to look over it now before I have to attend to other matters but I already see some areas of concern. The revenue stream indicated in the act depends on some quite vague issues
(c) FUNDING.—
11 (1) IN GENERAL.—There are appropriated to
12 the Medicare For All Trust Fund amounts sufficient
13 to carry out this Act from the following sources:
14 (A) Existing sources of Federal Govern15
ment revenues for health care.
16 (B) Increasing personal income taxes on
17 the top 5 percent income earners.
18 (C) Instituting a modest and progressive
19 excise tax on payroll and self-employment in20
come.
21 (D) Instituting a modest tax on unearned
22 income.
23 (E) Instituting a small tax on stock and
24 bond transactions.
None of this is defined. Additionally, salaries for health care workers are left to arbitrary decisions by plan administrators that even does not include geographic locations of the providers. The board can then decide what compensation is to be provided under the cloak of negotiated fees which are not always reflective of a hospital’s payroll or other status.
“small tax” and “increasing personal income taxes on the top 5 percent” is vague and can be damaging on more levels and other economic areas.
While I appreciate simplicity, I would rather have details than nebulous promises.
IT’S A MEDICARE CAGE MATCH! “LET’S GET READY TO RUUUUUMBLE”