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.
A boomerang is a frisbee for people without friends. 😉
The ACA is an attempt to achieve something but the result is not up to speed. There is an Aussie song called My Boomerang Won’t Come Back. I think that the song and lyrics are appropriate here. I wont repeat them. You all have heard it. Most of us know that the system is so dysfunctional that it cannot be cured with programs designed to pay for a corrupt system of capitalism in which there is no brake on greed.
Brad, My total sympathy on that kidney stone. Pain akin to childbirth, according to the RN’s who took care of me. You know, beer drinkers hardly ever get kidney stones, just sayn’!
As a recent victim of this disfunctional system, there are problems at every level. For the privilage of passing a kidney stone at the local ER, I recieved a bill for $12,000. The further entrenchment of the relationship between hospitals and insurance companies due to the ACA has only added insult to injury. You can read more about it here:
http://siriuscoffee.com/2014/12/16/i-passed-a-kidney-stone-at-the-local-er-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-12000-bill/
Brad, it sounds like a very painful experience for you in more ways than one, but your analysis is spot on. It is one reason I just got out of the entire medical health care system entirely. My wife passed a kidney stone recently. We looked at her symptoms and figured that was what was happening. No hospital visit and she returned to normal within 24 hours. I once had a serious problem with my back and was not able to walk for weeks. Same thing. No hospital visit. Body repairs itself without the help of doctors. I even deliver my own babies at home without doctors. People should be allowed to make these health care decisions for themselves without government now forcing us to choose the kind of health care they want us to choose. The truth is that I do not trust the medical profession. I’m sure there are some good people in that profession, but experience has taught me not to trust them. Your bill is an obvious example of it. I did have them help with my daughter who broke her arm once, but I demanded the bill immediately. Then I complained about the amount and that I did not have insurance. They immediately cut the bill by more than half. Fair enough. It was much less than what an insurance company would have charged me, and less than what the deductible would have been anyway. The medical profession suffers from the same corruption government suffers from. Too much money. People need to wake up and cut off the money supply to fix the problem. Instead, we have Supreme Court Justices arguing how nobody can afford health care without insurance companies paying the way for us. The truth is that we could better afford it if we got rid of all insurance and let people pay for health care directly. That is how price gougers are spotted in other professions.
Gruber is the intelligentsia’s version of People of WalMart.
““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,” Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009 lecture, the transcript of which made up the policy brief.”
In 2009, Obama was lying, saying this would save Americans money.
Anyone who supports Obamacare should be deeply ashamed.
BTW, I’m surprised that Justice Kagan’s recent interview with the President of Princeton has gone largely unnoticed. In it, she is asked about her judicial philosophy, including constitutional and statutory interpretation. She says in reply, “when I think about a statute, the first thing and the absolute most important thing is to look at the text of the statute. [The text] trumps everything else if the text is clear.”
If she meant what she said, then she ought to vote to say that subsidies are not allowed for insurance purchased on federal exchanges, since the statute clearly says those subsidies are only available to exchanges established by the states.
Her remarks are made at about the 27:10 mark. There’s a button for that segment in the transcript below the video that will take you directly to that part of the interview if you’d like to hear it in her own words.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?322869-1/discussion-supreme-court-justice-elena-kagan
Mr. Shulte, the UK isn’t the only country with a single payer system…
Ms. S, I’ve used the VA. It did take a bit long to receive what I needed. It was wonderful in other respects.
On the other hand, perhaps what we have now is simply what we deserve.
Karen,
If we were to untangle government from the market, insurance companies would return if it made economic sense.
david – those plans to open up competition among insurers is now moot. Many insurers fled the individual market entirely after the implementation of Obamacare.
As per usual, the government restricted competition and drove prices up.
Nate – the VA is single payor. You know, where our honored soldiers languished for 9 months to see a doctor, and some died waiting.
Sound good to you?
Bruce – Oh, yes, the infamous patient dumping orchestrated by Michele Obama. She really cares about health care for the poor.
Unconstitutional Government is driven by the law of intended negative consequences. This is why elections matter.
Bill W. said… 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.
My experience w/ the US health insurance and health care industries leaves me extremely impressed and endlessly grateful. Of course, that experience predates Obamacare, which promises only to degrade what was the best HC system in the world.
Although Hayek used the phrase “the pretense of knowledge” to criticize his fellow economists, that phrase applies in a different way to commenters like Bill W., who is demonstrably wrong in many of his assertions but considers himself an expert nevertheless. He, as well as Gruber, ought to consider Hayek’s warning:
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.
Let’s revisit, again, the differences between Romneycare and Obamacare.
1. Romneycare was a conservative solution to the problem of people who could afford insurance, but chose not to, getting free health care for the uninsured. It basically said that you either need to buy insurance, or pay for the cost of health care when you need it. No more free rides for those who are not poor.
2. It was formulated with the help of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and yet it had 100% bipartisan support and 100% transparency. There was no “we have to pass it to know what’s in it.”
3. It had a very narrow focus – save benefits for the poor. It did not rework the entire health insurance industry, outlaw policies, or decide on a single set of benefits that every American had to buy.
4. It was done on the state level, where states can experiment to see what works, or fails, for them. Their level of uninsured was far lower than, say, border states like CA.
To say that Obamacare was modeled after Romneycare is absurd, and shows a shocking lack of information on the matter.
Dust Bunny Queen: “And I was laughed and and derided by some people who comment now on this very blog.”
Sounds like basic Alinsky’s Rules for Radical, 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”, and 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
For them, disqualification is SOP. They don’t mean to thoughtfully engage ideas on their merits and arrive at reasoned conclusions with dialectic. Instead, they mean to impose their narrative as truth. They wrap alternative ideas, whatever their actual merits, in preformed strawmen from their narrative and marginalize/dismiss alternative voices from social consideration with rhetoric.
Come on now Karen! Obama knows what is best for you. Stop with the negativity.
I don’t believe the man.
Single payer would have guaranteed coverage.
This new system simply maximizes profits. I personally pray to God I never have to use my medical coverage due to those atrocious deductibles.
Nate – the NHS is single payer and they do not guarantee coverage. It is a hot mess.
DBQ: “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.”
Exactly! Obamacare is a false promise of health care for the poor, that actually took away health care from the middle class, just to provide a shiny, new, substandard insurance card.
Previously, insurance was market driven. If enough customers wanted something, insurance companies offered it. But no more. The government has decided it knows better than you do what you should be allowed to buy.
Bill W. said…
the framework for the ACA was Romneycare (are our memories that bad?) …..via Heritage and other poorly named “think tanks”.
This is complete nonsense. Your “memory” is a recovered one, via Michael Moore. The “Heritage plan” was basically a mandate for the purchase of catastrophic coverage. IOW, a far cry from the hot mess that is the ACA.
As for “Romneycare,”
What has retrospectively been described as “Romneycare” is much more accurately described as a health-care plan passed by massive supermajorities of liberal Massachusetts Democrats over eight Mitt Romney vetoes (every one of which was ultimately overridden by the legislature.)
source: TAP, not Fox.