MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has produced a firestorm of controversy over remarks made in various settings about the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and how drafters like himself relied on the “stupidity” of voters in passing the legislation. It appears that the Gruber hits keep coming, even as he prepares for another round of questioning in Congress. The latest comments from 2009 reveal Gruber saying that Obamacare would not produce affordable health care for many citizens since its focus is coverage not costs. This statement made five months before the passage of the Act from a key architect is in stark contrast to President Obama’s repeated assertions that premiums would go down dramatically. The latest statement will fuel questioning before Congress on whether the White House knew that premiums were unlikely to do down and that people would not be able to keep their current policies as promised by President Obama in selling the program.
Gruber stated in 2009 that Obamacare lacked cost controls in it and would not be affordable for many:
“The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can’t mandate insurance that’s not affordable. This is going to be a major issue . . . So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”
That view of the likely impact of the ACA was not only never shared by the Administration, it is in direct contradiction with the statements made by the White House on how costs would decline and people would be able to keep their policies if they liked them.
The latest comments are unlikely to gain Gruber any more allies. Once given millions to advise the federal and state governments on their health care system, he is now persona non grata. Indeed, Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi expressed a complete lack of knowledge of who Gruber is, was, or will be — even though she previously cited his work and he was paid $400,000 as one of the architects of Obamacare and has made over $2 million from HHS.
Gruber had already previously attracted controversy with statements where he 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 uproar 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. Gruber has become a major liability in the litigation. Gruber then was 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.” Now a new videotape has surfaced from Gruber speaking at the University of Rhode Island in 2012 and expressing the same contempt for the intelligence of citizens — suggesting again that they were hoodwinked to “the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” In another view taken from at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis, Gruber also refers to the “Cadillac tax,” and says “They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.” His comments of working in Massachusetts (with Mitt Romney) are no less insulting to an array of people.
The latest statement is also likely to serve to increase calls for Gruber and the Administration to produce withheld documents previously demanded by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This statement is far more important than past comments calling voters or politicians stupid. In 2009, Gruber was saying that the ACA was not about reducing costs but guaranteeing coverage. That seems manifestly true but it was not what the White House was saying at the time or even now. The statements are likely to draw more fire with fines set to increase under Obamacare in 2015.
The statement was again in a lecture by Gruber. Once again, Gruber was displaying the type of honesty and openness that students expect in classroom discussions. That is not the expectation however in political discussions, particularly in Washington. Gruber’s admissions have embarrassed the White House and Democratic leaders who pushed through the ACA on a razor thin vote. This is why academics often find work in politics to be particularly precarious. The nature of our work demands intellectual honestly and transparency that can be a liability in the political world. Indeed, conservative editorial are already proclaiming that “Grubergate” just got “better” .
The cancellation of state contracts is likely to be the least of Gruber’s problems in 2015 as he appears again before Congress.
Pogo Hears a Who
The individual health insurance market historically has been highly concentrated, with only modest competition in most states. At the time the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law in 2010, a single insurer had at least half of the individual market in 30 states and the District of Columbia. While a dominant insurer may be able to negotiate lower rates from hospitals and physicians, without significant competitors or regulatory oversight, there is no guarantee that those savings would be passed along to consumers
___________________________________________________________
Okay – one in 2015 – in 2013 we have a few companies with indications they may not participate. Were those companies already in those marketplaces and pulled out? did they subsequently enter those marketplaces? or is just a press statement sufficient? I am pretty sure those companies are actually competing in many marketplaces.
Actually Pogo your post copied above tells all were need to know about the lack of competition that existed in the health care marketplace before the ACA……and likely for many areas even after the ACA. Insurers seemed more then willing to almost “coordinate” coverage areas to ensure less or no competition. I know of no state insurance barriers to health care insurance providers entering a state and competing under the same rules fairly against other companies in that state.
for the record I am no fan of the ACA – I think the ACA was put in place simply to subsidize an industry that was heading towards an eventual death spiral. I just find it fascinating that a party that supposedly ran on that type of healthcare “marketplace” platform for over a decade became its biggest enemy overnight.
9 May 2014
Obama care will not be repealed as such. It will die the death of a thousand cuts as each untenable facet is stripped away one piece at a time starting with the medical device tax.
“Tens of thousands?”
Where did you get that statistic? Lena Dunham? Rolling Stone Magazine? The Daily Show?
Anyone with an ounce of sense knew that Obama was a bald faced liar. That is why the attack on Congressman Joe Wilson was so fierce.
August 7, 2013
davidm2575
Bill W, why do you keep saying AFA? Are you talking about the Affordable CARE Act?
_____________________________________________________________
you are 100% correct David – my apologies for the typos – am at work typing on something else with similar initials. My Bad!
As for the ACA product – I did not design it – conservatives designed the general framework when trying to offer an alternative in the 1990’s to Clinton’s healthcare initiatives. However, with “repeal and replace” now down to only “repeal”, it appears the whole thing was maybe just a fake out? Or is there a real alternative to tens of thousands of Americans dying annually due to lack of comprehensive health care coverage? or going bankrupt when a major health emergency situation arises?
“…President Obama’s repeated assertions that premiums would go down dramatically.”
Many of us have known for years that Pres. Obama is a bold faced liar. This is just one more piece of evidence.
Why do the liberals persist in denying that the man they elected is a liar?
The deception continues.
I can envision politicians using a famous claim of the marketing departments of software companies:
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
Maybe the course of how this plays out will be as follows:
1) The pols will ignore demands for accountability of those who sold Obamacare to the public under deceptive terms.
1a) a subset of this will be the “The ACA is a mess, but this is an important first step and the ends will justify all of this.”
2) Next, those same pols will ridicule anyone who brings up the Gruber debacle and the ACA. This has been done numerous times in the past with other issues.
3) Then comes the attack against those who demand accountability and transparency
It is not surprising that this won’t win Gruber any more allies. What is surprising is that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of their ilk still have any allies left. THEY are the ones who knowingly outright lying day in day out to the citizens for whom they are supposed to be acting in the best interest. And at the same time they were denigrating those who had legitimate concerns.
DISGUSTING FRAUDS, and dishonesty at this magnitude should have serious consequences, but they still have their supporters because they have a (D) after their name and therefore it can excused because the ends justify the means. Outrageous.
Pogo – could you please list the “many insurers’ that are dropping out of business entirely? and relate how only the AFA is the responsible part for that decision to exit ones primary business?
btw – smaller hospitals, non-profits, etc…. have been struggling for years – long before the AFA. But the larger for profit health care entities appear to be doing quite well looking at stock prices, mergers, etc…. Once again, the intended main beneficiaries.
Bill W, why do you keep saying AFA? Are you talking about the Affordable CARE Act?
Overall, the ACA is a carefully disguised insurance bailout in that it forces people to buy insurance or subsidize health insurance without receiving any of the benefits of healthcare. However, the ACA gets rid of insurance niches and thereby eliminates competition that would make the market more efficient and cost effective. Catastrophic insurance plans are basically illegal now. Insurance pools involving only healthy people are illegal. So health plans analogous to the safe driver insurance policies cannot exist any longer. In this way, some insurance companies that successfully competed by offering products with lower premiums that healthy people wanted can no longer offer those products and must go out of business. On the other hand, other insurance companies are guaranteed a better revenue stream and will be much better off.
“…that didn’t mostly benefit healthcare related businesses”
You’re wrong.
ACA is harmful to insurance companies, as intended.
Many insurors are dropping out of the business entirely because it’s impossible to make a profit. As intended, to immanentize the Medicare.
It is also crushing independent and small medical clinics and hospitals.
Sure, regulatory capture will occur. No doubt.
But the intent was gaining control over 1/6th of the US economy.
Socialism.
Well, the people voted in that wave of Democrats, regardless of their tendency to be dishonest power-mad statists who give you what they want you to have.
Shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.
A good chunk of the US are socialist in thought, trained by public schools and their grasping parents for decades.
The basics of the AFA/Romneycare/Obamacare were designed by the Heritage Foundation. Why would anyone think that the Heritage Foundation or millionaires on both aisles of Congress would design anything that didn’t mostly benefit healthcare related businesses?
And if you hate the AFA, then the same healthcare tenets used for the AFA will soon be sold to us as the answer for Medicare costs.
The people did not want this socialist agenda. They did not vote this in. The Democrats voted it in through backroom deals at night, even on Christmas Eve. If this bill was put to a democratic vote of all the people, it would have failed. It would fail today if we were allowed to vote to repeal it. I am not looking forward to paying the penalty for not buying something that I don’t want.
How ironic that Jonathan Gruber has become the inadvertently honest man who mistakenly told the truth about ObamaCare.
And how, now that Gruber has told (some of) the truth, despicable pols like Nancy (pass it to see what’s in it) Pelosi deny any knowledge of his very existence.
“Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”
Anyone of intelligence knew this was true years ago.
This has been the MO of statists for decades, socialism by the installment plan.
it is passing strange that telling the truth about public policy you desire is considered outrageous.
England’s NHS, their north star, is imploding. So the lie may get single payer installed, but the economics always fail. We’ll just have to suffer mightily for 3 generations to undo it.
People wanted socialism, and they’re going to get it, good and hard.