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.
At the time there were accusations that the University of Chicago Medical Center “steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.”
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times Saturday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer saw the light, photo courtesy NY Daily News):
Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants.
In fact, the Obama campaign has multiple ties to this program:
Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program — called the Urban Health Initiative — to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring, hospital officials said. […]
But the Urban Health Initiative has critics, including South Side residents and medical professionals.
“I’ve heard complaints from a handful of constituents, but I’ve also had calls from people in the health care profession complaining,” said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, whose 4th Ward is just north of the hospital. “The medical professionals who have come to me are accusing the university of dumping patients on its neighboring institutions. … Whether it’s being implemented in the way that’s in the best interest of the patient, I can’t tell you.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2934445/posts
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/08/23/michelle-obamas-hospital-shuns-uninsured-poor-people#ixzz277gES9Ch
Some people may find this of interest:
Michelle Obama appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals
May 9, 2005
“Prior to joining the Hospitals, Obama worked as an associate dean of student services for the University of Chicago where she developed the University’s first office of community service. She came to the Hospitals in 2002 and quickly built up programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting.”http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2005/20050509-obama.html.
Bill:
“I’ll be tied up at work for hours, but I hope no one on this board or their families ever has to experience the difficult healthcare/$ decisions some Americans may have to deal with…..and the resultant consequences.”
I went from paying a few hundred dollars a month for insurance for a family of 3, for a policy that every doctor and surgical facility we ever wanted accepted, to almost $1,000/month. My deductible went from $500 to $6,000 per person. Drug formulary was restricted, and off formulary benefits evaporated. Most doctors do not accept Obamacare, so I now have to pay out of pocket to see a doctor or get most prescriptions.
How’s that for “difficult healthcare/$ decisions” for you?
How much do the doctors at your private make in dollars per year? Same re public hospitals including VA? How much does the mailman make?
Where does the money come from to pay both the doctors and the mailman?
From the public at large? Only those who get any medical treatment? Only those who get mail?
Is the payment to doctors and mailmen socialized? By that I mean, does the public at large pay for these costs?
What if you were required to pay for all of your costs and there was no insurance at all– public or private? Would you be better off?
Would we all be better off healthwise and financially if Americans did not smoke tobacco?
Are the voters stupid? Is Congress person whats his/her name from your district, stupid?
Are smokers stupid?
Is the Heritage Foundation smart or stupid?
Was Mitt Romney, the gypsie, in on it?
What is wrong with the ACA?
Repeal it. If your Congress person wont move to repeal it and wont vote to repeal it and you think that Congress person to be stupid then vote someone smart into office.
We do not need medical care at all. Let us all just go with the flow and croak on time in 2029 or what ever year our time is up. We do not need millionaire doctors.
Here is a jingle which the cancer doctor team at the clinic at the VA sing:
Cigarette ashes,
Cigarette butts!
We got the other team by the nuts!
Pull team pull!
Now, I do not know who the other “team” is. But the jingle is interesting.
Some people may find this of interest:
Michelle Obama appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals
May 9, 2005
“Prior to joining the Hospitals, Obama worked as an associate dean of student services for the University of Chicago where she developed the University’s first office of community service. She came to the Hospitals in 2002 and quickly built up programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting.”http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2005/20050509-obama.html.
———————————————————————————————————————————-
Michelle Obama’s Hospital Shuns Uninsured Poor People. Her job was to shove them away.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/08/23/michelle-obamas-hospital-shuns-uninsured-poor-people ^ | August 23, 2008 | By Noel Sheppard
Posted on Friday, September 21, 2012 12:38:02 PM by dennisw
Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama has positioned himself as the champion of the poor and all those that can’t afford health insurance.
Maybe he should direct his efforts to the hospital his wife Michelle works for, as it appears the University of Chicago Medical Center “steers patients who don’t have private insurance — primarily poor, black people — to other health care facilities.”
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times Saturday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer saw the light, photo courtesy NY Daily News):
Michelle Obama — currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital — helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants.
In fact, the Obama campaign has multiple ties to this program:
Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program — called the Urban Health Initiative — to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama’s wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center’s board, backed the Axelrod firm’s hiring, hospital officials said. […]
But the Urban Health Initiative has critics, including South Side residents and medical professionals.
“I’ve heard complaints from a handful of constituents, but I’ve also had calls from people in the health care profession complaining,” said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, whose 4th Ward is just north of the hospital. “The medical professionals who have come to me are accusing the university of dumping patients on its neighboring institutions. … Whether it’s being implemented in the way that’s in the best interest of the patient, I can’t tell you.”
freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2934445/posts
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/08/23/michelle-obamas-hospital-shuns-uninsured-poor-people#ixzz277gES9Ch
@ Bill W
I will say again what I have said before and which is an absolute truth.
Health Care is not the same thing as Medical Insurance….Medical insurance is not HEALTH insurance. If you [generic you] wanted to improve health care, there were and still are many ways to do this.
Insurance is the purchasing of a policy on the chance of needing coverage for an event. If you are buying auto collision insurance or fire insurance you don’t get to buy coverage for the event AFTER you have wrecked your car or your house in on fire.
I’m sorry your wife had cancer and couldn’t get insurance for her pre existing cancer.. I’m sorry my husband was uninsurable because of diabetes. In both cases….our houses were already on fire and we didn’t buy insurance first. Them’s the breaks.
What Obamacare did was ruin existing Medical (not health) insurance and did NOTHING to increase or improve health care. In fact. It has made health care worse by decreasing access to health care providers and increasing the costs of procedures.
Does this sound familiar at all? This is “Obamacare” in Chicago the actual model for the national version.
January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee
Obama Passed Health Care Justice Act; IL’s Largest Health Care Coalition Applauded Obama’s Leadership In Passing the Bill. In 2004, Obama was chief sponsor of bill creating the Health Care Justice Act,…
The Journal Register wrote the bill was “amended to make full access to health care a goal instead of a policy and to strongly encourage, instead of require, the state to implement a health-care access plan.” The bill passed. When the bill was funded in 2005, Jim Duffett, executive director of Campaign for Better Health Care, the largest health care coalition in Illinois, said, “We applaud the leadership of Governor Blagojevich, state Rep. William Delgado and former state Sen. Barack Obama, who were the chief sponsors of this act.”
Health Care Justice Act
The Adequate Health Care Task Force completed its work in January 2007. All members’ tenure on this task force concluded effective January 2007.
Illinois Public Act 93-0973, formerly House Bill 2268, creates the Health Care Justice Act and encourages Illinois to implement a health care plan that provides access to a full range of preventive, acute and long-term health care services, and maintains and improves the quality of health care services. The legislation establishes an “Adequate Health Care Task Force” with 29 voting members
The Adequate Health Care Task Force issued its final report on January 26, 2007, which calls for expanding health care coverage in Illinois. Under the Task Force’s recommended “Health Care Coverage Expansion Model” all Illinois residents will be required to obtain health care coverage and those under 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) will have subsidized coverage options available to them
Adequate Health Care Task Force Final Report – PDF
In 2009, President Obama signaled to Congress that he wanted to pass health care reform for all Americans. Campaign for Better Health Care held press conferences, rallies, and educational events all around Illinois to help pass health care reform.
Bill W is such a saint. Don’t you all wish you were fortunate to have his good heart and were as compassionate as he is?
Now get out there and work harder so his political party can steal more of the money you earn. There’s bloated bureaucracies to fund and vote buying to be had. Al in the name of altruistic compassion, of course!
” I’d understand the hatred”
Liberal talking point: Disagreement with their position equals “hate.”
” if there were actual efforts to improve healthcare in the USA”
There have been innumerable plans over the last 30 years.
Democrats controlled the entire conversation in 2008; Democrats and only Democrats voted for Obamacare instead.
Look, this is your fault.
Even Gruber admitted that Democrat voters were too dumb to notice what Congress had done, and he laughed about it.
“That offers zero separation between you and everyone else”
Actually, there is a significant difference between rhetoric and actual action. I’d understand the hatred if there were actual efforts to improve healthcare in the USA – remember “repeal and replace”. There must be other ideas! Right? But instead we have substituted lazy party before American lives propaganda for actual effort. Really sad.
I’ll be tied up at work for hours, but I hope no one on this board or their families ever has to experience the difficult healthcare/$ decisions some Americans may have to deal with…..and the resultant consequences.
Best and safe New Years wishes to all.
Bill W wrote: “I’d understand the hatred if there were actual efforts to improve healthcare in the USA – remember “repeal and replace”. There must be other ideas!”
There have been plenty of ideas from Republicans. Foremost is allowing insurance companies to compete across State lines. The problem is that liberals don’t recognize a plan unless it is on the road to free healthcare for everyone. They have never understood the proverb that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Karen, Ca. is indeed different. It was built w/ superhighways for autos. Mass transit, built back in the early 1900’s works. In NYC, Boston, Philly, Chicago, and many other cities, subways, trains, buses, are how people have gone to and from work for generations. Many people in NYC never drive. But, you CANNOT change how people move about by edict. Californians are drivers, and ain’t nothing gonna change that. But, I’m preachin’ to the choir on this.
I don’t think even the low information voters are going to buy that Obamacare is the fault of the GOP, or any party except the Democrats.
Nick – almost no one takes rapid transit in CA. I watch empty buses all the time throughout Southern CA. The MetroLink is bleeding riders. I recall getting a schedule to take a train for what was a 45 minute car ride. It would have taken 3 hours. It just takes too long to get anywhere. We’re too spread out. If you happen to live a couple of stops away from your work destination, it would be a great idea. The only person I know who takes the train to work is my cousin, who typically has enormous amounts of work to do at home. The long commute allows him to get his work done so when he (finally) gets home, he can relax.
HSR would be an interesting novelty for some travelers, but it will take longer than a plane ride, and cost almost as much.
CA’s goal should be alleviating the gridlock that is always one of the top reasons why people leave the state. They should also maintain those roads. But, as usual, Liberal governments fail to complete their most basic tasks while instead reaching for “really neat stuff” that the taxpayers really cannot afford.
Big Government inevitably leads to problems, inefficiencies, and an erosion of personal freedom.
Sen,Obama orchestrated a smaller model of the ‘affordable care’ cost shifting in Chicago, with insurance companies silently behind the program. The deal was a betrayal in the end and only rationed real care and shifted emergency room patients away from primary care…all referred to the “affordable” care clinics of sub-prime medical attention.
The truth is far away and covered very successfully with market friendly names. The term “obamacare” distracts from the fact that this is actually universal insurance and has very little to directly protect the medical-care delivery system from leveraging medical necessity into a newer and bigger dark pool of unaccountable price gouging, private equity ownership and cost progressions to float cost of living for the wealthy…and shareholders will be the excuse for CEO salaries that are off the charts!
Karen, Liberals love choo choo trains. I watch the light rail in Minneapolis w/ just a smattering of passengers every time I’m @ a crossing. It’s too expensive, folks just drive or take buses.
Darren nailed it.
” I support saving American lives.”
That offers zero separation between you and everyone else.
Unless, as is likely, your definition of “saving lives” requires single payer, which is debatable, given the poorer performance of the NHS, as it costs lives (with cancer and heart disease) and even sends patients to early graves intentionally.
Obamacare is owned 100 percent by Democratic Party on a straight party line vote. It is too late to pass the buck.
Socialists are always blaming the tattered remnants of the free market for all that troubles health care.
And yet the state of Virginia recently decided that it could not afford single payer.
What gives?
It’s 1/8th the size of France and it still couldn’t pay for it?
I am beginning to suspect Bill W is another underpants gnome.