ObamaCare Architect cites "stupidity of Americans" for lack of transparency

[Soul Crusher]

Gruber’s name is all over the official record.

http://www.finance.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=dc892979-001b-7677-e099-84105e0c92c9

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/legacy/fullcomm/107cong/2-13-02/records/gruber.htm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/11/24/An-Insightful-Article-on-Health-Care-Costs/

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111shrg75442/html/CHRG-111shrg75442.htm

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-112srpt11/html/CRPT-112srpt11.htm

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg50479/html/CHRG-111hhrg50479.htm

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111shrg50510/html/CHRG-111shrg50510.htm

on and on and on....

[Soul Crusher]

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Obamacare guru shocks again with abortion boast
World Net Daily ^ | November 14, 2014 | Jerome R. Corsi
Posted on November 15, 2014 7:25:42 AM EST by Cincinatus' Wife

NEW YORK – The Obamacare architect at the center of controversy for his frank admissions that passing the president’s signature legislation required lying to the American people published a paper during the Clinton administration observing that legalizing abortion saved the government $14 billion in assistance to economically disadvantaged mothers, including African Americans, and lowered crime.

MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber argued in his paper that without the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, “marginal children” would have been born to many poor mothers. He said statistics show these children would have been 70 percent more likely to live in a single-parent family, 40 percent more likely to live in poverty, 50 percent more likely to receive welfare and 35 percent more likely to die as an infant.

Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner in their bestselling 2005 book, “Freakonomics,” relied on Gruber’s work to argue that legalizing abortion was responsible for an approximately 50 percent reduction of crime in major urban centers in the early 1990s.

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Who Lied? Jonathan Gruber Linked to Getting Obamacare to Illegal Aliens



By Jeffrey Lord | November 14, 2014 | 8:18 PM EST


 
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Jonathan Gruber, Sylvia Burwell and Joe Wilson.  Added to the mix of the two biggest issues of the day - ObamaCare and an expected Obama executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, this is a potent cocktail of political explosives.
 
 Let’s start in September, 2009.

As President Obama addresses a Joint Session of Congress on his health care proposals - the proposals that would eventually become The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) -- aka ObamaCare -- South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson abruptly and famously shouted “You lie!”

While Wilson was chastised for his decided breach of congressional decorum, in fact what he was literally yelling about were these words from President Obama: “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too is false. The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

Now?

Controversial MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, n the headlines for repeated videotaped admissions of lying to the “stupid” American people in writing the ACA law, has been tied to the hotly controversial issue of amnesty for illegal immigrants. An amnesty that would get around the prohibitions of the ACA that deny Obamacare to illegal immigrants by simply and directly removing the status of “undocumented” from “undocumented immigrants” - thereby making them eligible for Obamacare.

Now, Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld has dug up this recent clip of HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell calling for “extending Obamacare benefits to DREAM-eligible illegal immigrants” and adding that “DREAMers are not able to be covered in the marketplace. And this is an issue that I think is more than a health care issue — it is an immigration issue…And I think everyone probably knows that this administration feels incredibly strongly about the fact that we need to fix that. We need to reform the system and make the changes that we need that will lead to benefits in everything from health care to economics to so many things — a very important step that we need to take as a nation.”

And who just happens to be well out there providing the data on illegal immigrants and Obamacare? If you guessed MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, you would be right.

In other words? President Obama is getting around his promise to Congress that September of 2009 that “the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally” by simply bestowing amnesty on “those who are here illegally.”  Once legal, they will be qualified for Obamacare.

And Jonathan Gruber, who confesses that the Obama administration deliberately sold its program by lying about it, has now been tied to supplying data on health care for those illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants who would instantly become beneficiaries of the very same ACA once granted amnesty -- exactly as Obama HHS Secretary Burwell said was the goal.

 


 

In a “Final Report to the Commonwealth Fund” titled “ Undocumented Immigrants and Health Care Reform”, published by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research on August 31, 2012 (hat tip to NB's P.J. Gladnick), the report acknowledges only two sources at the very beginning of the report. The two sentence “Acknowledgments” reads in its entirety as follows: “Funding for this report was provided by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund. Special data runs were provided by Jonathan Gruber at MIT.”
 
The Commonwealth Fund describes itself on its website this way:


“The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.”

The report makes clear in its Executive Summary that because of a specific prohibition in the ACA, illegal immigrants are prohibited from receiving ObamaCare. The Executive Summary says;


“Despite the far-reaching expansion of health care coverage for the large number of uninsured individuals in the US, the ACA explicitly excludes undocumented immigrants from purchasing health insurance coverage through the health exchanges. In addition, undocumented immigrants continue to be ineligible for most public forms of health insurance coverage and would not benefit from any Medicaid expansions carried out by the states.”

This ban on ObamaCare for “undocumented immigrants” as well as their ineligibility for “most public forms of health insurance coverage” would end if President Obama grants them amnesty. Which is exactly what Secretary Burwell was demanding just this past week.

The UCLA  summary goes on to say: “In addition, we present estimates of uninsurance rates for the undocumented population before and after full implantation of ACA based on the Gruber MicroSimulation Model (GMSIM). “

Among the “Key findings” based on Jonathan Gruber’s data in this report are these:


* “….factors such as limited access to quality health care, low income and occupational status, and legal status may erode the health advantage of the undocumented at a faster pace than their documented counterparts.”

Access to Health Care

* Health insurance coverage is lower for undocumented immigrants than US-born citizens and other US immigrant groups.

* Significant barriers to health care face undocumented immigrants, including low socio- economic status, difficulty negotiating time off of work, lack of transportation and language barriers.

 * Fewer health services are used by undocumented immigrants than US-born citizens or other immigrant groups. After adjusting for age and gender differences between groups, we estimate that undocumented immigrants in California were significantly less likely to have any doctor visits in the past year compared to naturalized and US-born citizens.

* Emergency department (ED) services; despite the popular conception that undocumented immigrants use more ED care, we estimate that undocumented immigrants are significantly less likely than naturalized citizens and U.S.-born citizens to visit the emergency department....


Impact on access of the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the ACA

* Uninsurance rates based on the Gruber MicroSimulation Model (GMSIM) estimate that there will be a negligible change in the uninsurance rates of undocumented immigrants. Nationally, their share of all uninsured ages 0-64 is projected to rise from about 10% to 25% as a result of the improved coverage of the rest of the population.

* Impacts of the ACA on health insurance for undocumented populations will likely vary by state. For example, an estimated 1.2 million undocumented immigrants are expected to remain uninsured in California once ACA is fully implemented or 41% of the total uninsured in the state, compared with 25% nationwide. In contract, New York is estimated to have the third largest number of uninsured undocumented immigrants in the country, 265,000, which will account for an estimated 16% of that state’s total undocumented population.


Policy options to address access to care barriers for undocumented immigrants

* It may be possible to design programs that focus on those left out of health care reform generically, including those who are US citizens and permanent residents, that will also benefit the undocumented.

Catch that last line in the “Key Findings” section of this report? A report depending on data from Jonathan Gruber?

“It may be possible to design programs that….will also benefit the undocumented”?





That program has now been designed. No less than Secretary Burwell is now on video saying this is exactly the result the Obama White House was looking for. It is called an executive order giving amnesty to millions of those undocumenteds. An amnesty that would then enable millions of the undocumented to qualify for ObamaCare. With data on both health care and illegal immigrants supplied by…Jonathan Gruber.

Question: Was this Commonwealth Fund Report - with Gruber’s data on undocumented immigrants and health care - used in any fashion by Secretary Burwell? Or the Obama White House? Or anyone anywhere in the Obama administration? Not to mention the Democrats’ leadership in Congress?  As news accounts have vividly illustrated, Nancy Pelosi herself is on video tape talking up Mr. Gruber - despite her current denial. Gruber is on record in this PBS Frontline interview from 2012  admitting he discussed ObamaCare in the Oval Office with the President himself in 2009. He pointedly notes just how well connected he is inside not only the White House but the Harry Reid-run Democratic Senate.

Says Mr. Gruber:


“I worked with the transition team to help put the numbers together for the administration. And then, essentially, most of 2009 I was really on loan from the administration to Congress, particularly the Senate Finance Committee, to help them put the numbers together on what became the finance committee bill, which really became Obamacare. Yeah, that's what I did.”

So again? Did this Commonwealth Report on health care for illegals make its way to Secretary Burwell and the HHS bureaucracy? To Mr. Gruber’s friends anywhere in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill?  Thus encouraging the push for amnesty so the undocumented could receive ObamaCare? A belief 

Five years ago, Congressman Joe Wilson’s breach of protocol on the House floor was prompted by his accusation that President Obama was lying about his intentions in supplying ObamaCare to illegals.

With a stroke of a pen on an executive order giving amnesty for illegal immigrants, the President will, among other things, at last prove Joe Wilson correct. Mr. Obama did lie. And helping with all that data on both health care and immigration?

Jonathan Gruber.
- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-lord/2014/11/14/who-lied-jonathan-gruber-linked-getting-obamacare-illegal-aliens#sthash.IPhsLrHY.dpuf

AD FEEDBACK



 



 

 

[Soul Crusher]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly surfaced videos are adding fresh energy to the efforts of congressional conservatives to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, feeding into their contentions that the overhaul was approved through a scheme of deception.

Some are calling anew for hearings on the law, which is about to begin its second year of coverage for millions of Americans. And activists are telling lawmakers to make good on their talk of scrapping the law or face defeat in the next elections.

The videos show MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, an adviser in the law's drafting, saying that "the stupidity of the American voter" helped Democrats pass the complex legislation.

"The Gruber clip has caught fire," says David Bozell, whose ForAmerica group campaigns against the health care law online.

In one video, Gruber describes what he depicts as the behind-the-scenes political strategy of the law's supporters. At a 2013 University of Pennsylvania public forum, he says Americans' lack of understanding helped Democrats pass the legislation.

Other impolitic statements have continued to dribble out in which Gruber claims that the law was written to deceive federal budget watchdogs and mocks conservatives' concerns over health care policy.

He has since disavowed the most controversial remarks, saying he "spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments."

Republicans, who made big gains during last week's midterm congressional elections, have stood unified against the law they deride as "Obamacare," and they now point to Gruber's comments as yet another reason to dump it. They say the remarks show a cynical strategy by Democrats to camouflage the law's politically unpalatable aspects and sneak them past an unsuspecting public.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is among those calling for hearings, perhaps including Gruber as a witness.

"This is what we complained about when we fought it for all those months on the floor. Nobody understood it," McCain said.

Another advocate for scrapping the law, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, branded the measure "just a bundle of deception."

The videos have put Democrats on the defensive. Traveling with Obama in Asia this week, White House press secretary Josh Earnest defended the health law and said he would "disagree vigorously" with Gruber's assessment. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., instrumental in the law's passage, said she did not know Gruber - despite having cited his analysis at least once in the past during an on-camera briefing with reporters.

"He didn't help write our bill," she said this week.

Both policy and politics are in play for the GOP. If congressional Republicans fail to push hard for repeal, they'll face angered activists.

As the head of one influential conservative organization met with activists in Georgia this week, the mere mention of Gruber's name drew jeers and brought people to their feet.

"It certainly has lit a fire among the grass roots," said Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham. "All it does is confirms what everyone knows: I don't think anyone in this country thought this law was passed without obfuscation."

"How can you put another red penny toward this program?" asks ForAmerica's Bozell, "when the architect of it says the only reason it passed is a lie?"

Few others, however, would call Gruber the architect of the massive law. He was a paid outside consultant, hired to crunch numbers as the legislation was developed. Ironically, he was brought on board because of expertise he acquired in helping Republican Gov. Mitt Romney set up a health care expansion in Massachusetts. That plan became the basis for Obama's law.

Many Republicans contend there was a lack of transparency when the legislation was being put together. However, according to Democratic tallies, House lawmakers spent almost 100 hours and the Senate more than 160 in public hearings and debate on the measures, much of it televised on C-SPAN.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said Gruber's comments show that "the president and his party intentionally hid Obamacare's true costs." But as it was being written, the law was frequently reviewed by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the often-critical Medicare Office of the Actuary.

---

Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

---

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip-elliott

© 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

[Soul Crusher]

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-one-man-could-obliterate-obamacare-11685

[Pray_4_War]

This guy needs to held to account.  Everyone involved in this crime needs to be held to account for this.  This is a conspiracy to rob money from the American people.  A willful and purposeful deception.  Now that they have fucked everything up they are sitting around laughing about how stupid the American people are.  When is enough going to be enough?

[tonymctones]

This guy needs to held to account.  Everyone involved in this crime needs to be held to account for this.  This is a conspiracy to rob money from the American people.  A willful and purposeful deception.  Now that they have fucked everything up they are sitting around laughing about how stupid the American people are.  When is enough going to be enough?

The issue is the base of the left agrees with tactics like this.

Ask strawman, vince, whork etc. they dont care how their agenda gets implemented only that it gets implemented.

[Soul Crusher]

The issue is the base of the left agrees with tactics like this.

Ask strawman, vince, whork etc. they dont care how their agenda gets implemented only that it gets implemented.

Tony - yes or no - have we been correct from Day 1 about Obamacare? 

[Pray_4_War]

Tony - yes or no - have we been correct from Day 1 about Obamacare? 

It's indisputable.

[Soul Crusher]

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More on Jon Gruber
New York Times ^ | January 15, 2010 | Paul Krugman
Posted on November 14, 2014 11:29:12 PM EST by gusopol3

In fact, it’s hard to see who else you could have hired. Modeling health reform is a very detail-driven business: you need a detailed statistical representation of the population, together with detailed estimates of behavioral responses to incentives. Gruber has spent years developing such a model, which is maintained and update at considerable expense. Who else could bring the same resources to bear? Well, I guess the administration could have turned to the Lewin Group, but aside from the fact that Gruber has such sterling academic credentials, Lewin is owned by United Healthcare.

In other words, Gruber is a real authority, and the obvious person to fill a needed role. As I’ve written before, he should have taken more pains to reveal that role. But there was nothing corrupt about the arrangement.

(Excerpt) Read more at krugman.blogs.nytimes.co m ...

[Soul Crusher]

BRISBANE, Australia — President Obama dismissed renewed criticism of his signature health care law Sunday and disputed an assertion from a former architect of the policy who claimed the administration had deceived lawmakers.

Jonathan Gruber, an economist, suggested last year that the administration’s signature health-care legislation passed in part because of the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” over its funding mechanisms.

“I just heard about this,” Obama said at a new conference, after wrapping up two days of meetings with world leaders here at the G-20 Summit. “The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed his opinion that I completely disagree with — it is no reflection on the actual process that was run.”

It marked the first time Obama has weighed in on the video, which became public after he left Washington for a week-long trip to Asia. Gruber is an MIT economics professor and health care policy expert who was a paid consultant for the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act.

His remarks were captured on a video that recently surfaced on social media and have been seized on by Republicans who want to dismantle the law. Conservatives in both chambers of Congress said they might call on Gruber to testify on Capitol Hill, a process that would reopen the ugly political fight over a law that has already enrolled millions of Americans in new health care plans.

“We had a year-long debate,” Obama said. “Go look back at your stories. One thing we can’t say is that we didn’t have a lengthy debate over health care in the United States. Every press outlet here should go back and pull up every clip and every story. It’s fair to say there is not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was not fully transparent.”


In a news conference that touched on several diverse topics, Obama also spoke for the first time about his face-to-face meetings with Russian President Vladi mir Putin. The two leaders, whose relations have turned icy over Russian support for Ukrainian separatists, spoke informally several times at an economic forum in Beijing last week and at the G-20 Summit in Brisbane.

Obama called the discussions “business-like,” and said he warned Putin that if he “continues down the path that he is on ... the isolation that Russia is currently experiencing will continue.”

On Syria, Obama reiterated that his thinking had not changed over his refusal to send in U.S. ground troops to fight in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq. The president has authorized an increase in troops to act in support and advisory roles in the Middle East, but he said suggestions that his military advisers are requesting U.S. forces to fight on the front lines is wrong.

The president said that Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has not recommended that he reverse his position. Rather, Obama said, Dempsey has envisioned hypothetical situations in which more direct action from the U.S. military would be required.

“Yes, there’s always a circumstance in which the United States needs to deploy U.S. ground troops,” Obama said. “If we discovered [the Islamic State] had gotten possession of a nuclear weapon, then yes, you could anticipate that not only Chairman Dempsey would recommend sending U.S. troops to get the weapons out of their hands, I would order it.”


The question, Obama continued, is “what are those circumstances? I would not speculate on those.”

On immigration, the president acknowledged, when pressed by a reporter, that any changes to border control laws that he makes through executive action could be overturned by the next president. Obama has vowed to act on his own after a comprehensive legislative bill failed in Congress last summer, and the president is weighing steps that could shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

“The record will show I’ve actually taken fewer executive actions than my predecessor,” Obama said. “Nobody disputes that. What’s changed is the reaction of some of my friends in Congress about me exercising what are normal and frankly typical exercises in presidential authority. But you are right that the very nature of executive action means a future president could reverse that action. That’s always been true.”

Obama also was asked about the potential for a government shutdown if his move to change immigration laws, which Republicans fiercely oppose, sparks a political fight that results in conservatives refusing to pass a bill to fund the government beyond next month, when the current funding bill expires.

“I take Mitch McConnell at his word when he says the government will not shut down. No reason for it to shut down,” Obama said of the Kentucky Republican who will become the majority leader of the Senate in January. “We’ve traveled that path before. It’s bad for country; it’s bad for every elected official in Washington.”






Fng lying pos.   F him

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/16/what-exactly-was-grubers-role-in-the-creation-of-the-health-law



Oshitface caught in another lie. 

[Soul Crusher]

Obamacare architect’s “stupid” voter remarks create real problems (especially with a GOP Congress)
Daily Digest News ^  | November 16, 2014 | Dan Taylor

Posted on ‎11‎/‎16‎/‎2014‎ ‎7‎:‎51‎:‎00‎ ‎AM by Cincinatus' Wife

The recent comments by an architect of Obamacare have created real problems for supporters of the act as Republicans win sweeping elections and pledge to hold hearings to roll back some of its measures.

MIT economist and Affordable Care Act architect Jonathan Gruber created quite a stir recently when he attributed the success in pasting legislation for it to the “stupidity of the American voter.” The comments took place at an academic conference last year and is only just now becoming public, and Republicans are seizing on it as they seek to attack the ACA, according to the Boston Globe.

The GOP is sure to use it as justification for new hearings on the act and potentially repealing it, at least partially. The comments will give them fodder to argue that the American voter was lied to, and thus it deserves another look. Gruber himself may be called to testify, in what is likely to be quite the partisan spectacle on Capitol Hill.

Gruber said the remarks were “off the cuff,” but acknowledged he regretted making them. He said his essential point was that the Obama Administration had to convince the Congressional Budget Office not to list the individual mandate as a tax even though it essentially was, because anything couched as a tax increase would not be politically feasible. He also said the Obama Administration did not tell the public that healthy people would subsidize premiums for sick people under the ACA.

The firestorm that erupted was largely ignored by Gruber and the Obama Administration as it was largely confined to right-wing circles. However, it has lately become impossible to ignore, especially with Republicans now holding the reigns of power in both the House and Senate.

The scandal has also distracted from any of Obamacare’s successes. A New York Times report recently said that after a year in place, the ACA has largely succeeded in delivering on the president’s main promises, as the number of uninsured tumbled by about 25 percent, with several million more expected to sign up in the next few years.

However, the downsides include the fact that 30 million will remain uninsured despite the act. Republicans will seize on those downsides as they reexamine the issue in the coming months and years.

[Soul Crusher]

The CBO Effectively Used Gruber’s Model to Score Obamacare
Weekley Standard ^  | November 16, 2014 | JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

Posted on ‎11‎/‎16‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎58‎:‎00‎ ‎PM by Cincinatus' Wife

Two well-placed sources on Capitol Hill say that the Congressional Budget Office effectively used Jonathan Gruber’s model to score Obamacare. That model favors government mandates over market competition and claims that essentially the only way to achieve a large reduction in the number of uninsured Americans is to impose an Obamacare-like individual mandate. Moreover, because the model that the CBO used in scoring Obamacare is the same one it uses today, any alternative to Obamacare that doesn’t include an individual mandate — which is to say, any conservative alternative — would be scored by the CBO as falling well short, in terms of coverage numbers, of Gruber’s preferred legislation.

While the CBO’s model isn’t exactly the same as Gruber’s, one well-placed congressional source says that the two models are “eerily similar.” That source adds that, not only was Gruber one of the CBO’s academic advisors at the time that Obamacare was scored — a claim echoed by the Huffington Post — but two of Gruber’s graduate student protégés worked on the scoring.

Gruber himself describes his model and the CBO’s as being “very similar.” In early 2011, he wrote:

“CBO and I both estimate [the] that Affordable Care Act will cover about 60 percent of those who would be uninsured absent the law. We both find that there would be a very modest reduction of employer-sponsored insurance, that premiums in the nongroup insurance market for the same quality product would fall, and that there would not be much effect on premiums in the employer-provided insurance market.”

For the record, before Obamacare passed, the CBO predicted that the president’s signature legislation would have led to 19 million more people having health insurance by 2014 (see Table 4). In reality, Obamacare has maybe hit half that number — and many if not most of Obamacare’s newly insured have simply been dumped into Medicaid.

While failing to disclose it at the time, the Obama administration paid Gruber almost $400,000 in taxpayers’ money because, in the Department of Health and Human Services’ words, he had “developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model” to which the Obama administration wanted access. Noting how “similar” Gruber’s model is to the CBO’s, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler writes that, with access to Gruber’s model, the Obama administration “could predict with reasonable certainty how CBO would score legislation.” Kessler adds, “Given that legislation in Washington often falls or rises depending on the CBO score, that made this model a very powerful tool for administration officials.”

Given the importance of Gruber’s role, why wasn’t it made more transparent? Well, as Gruber might say — and has said — “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” especially given “the stupidity of the American voter.”

Gruber had influence over the CBO, the White House, and Congress alike. Indeed, it seems that it might be hard to overestimate his importance; his role was central to the efforts of President Obama and his Democratic allies to shove Obamacare down an unwilling citizenry’s throat.

Jane Hamsher called attention to Gruber’s singular role just days before the House’s fateful vote on Obamacare. In a piece published by the Huffington Post on March 18, 2010 — three days before Paul Ryan’s rousing and timeless speech on the House floor and the vote to follow — Hamsher highlighted that “the White House, the Senate, the DNC and other Democratic leaders...distributed Gruber’s work and cited it as independent validation of their proposals, orchestrating the appearance of broad consensus when in fact it was all part of the same effort.” Moreover, “Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work performed as a contractor to the White House and paid for by taxpayers.”

Hamsher’s piece is worth quoting at length, for it shows that Gruber had his fingers all over Obamacare, even as the Obama administration did its best to wipe away the prints.

She writes,

“How did the feedback loop work? Well, take Gruber’s appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage. On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Ezra published an excerpt.

“White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber’s Senate testimony and Ezra Klein’s article on the White House blog. ‘We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day’ he said, pointing to Gruber’s ‘objective analysis.’ The ‘transparent’ part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber’s contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody…bothered to disclose.

“Two days [after the Senate bill was unveiled], Gruber published a paper entitled ‘Impacts of the Senate High Cost Insurance Excise Tax on Wages: Updated,’ claiming that the excise tax would result in wage hikes of $234 billion from 2013 through 2019….

“The next day on [November] 21st, Ron Brownstein wrote in the Atlantic about Gruber’s effusive praise for the cost-cutting measures in the bill:…‘You couldn’t have done better than they are doing,’ says Gruber. [Brownstein also wrote that Gruber told him, “I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff.”]

“On Monday the 23rd, the DNC was sending the Brownstein column around in its entirety...one of 71 emails they would send touting Gruber's work....

“David Brooks of the New York Times was not convinced that the Senate bill would be deficit neutral, so Peter Orszag pointed him to...Brownstein's ‘insightful article on health care costs’….

“Paul Krugman cited Gruber’s glowing analysis in the Brownstein article – ‘this is the best effort anyone has made’ -- as one of the reasons he supported the Senate bill....Jeff Bingaman mentioned the Krugman piece on the floor of the Senate, and entered it into the Congressional Record….

“On November 27, following the release of the CBO score, Gruber issued another report saying the Senate bill would reduce non-group premiums (Gruber is one of the CBO’s academic advisors)….

“The next day... [Politico’s] Mike Allen [wrote a piece] with the headline ‘MIT analysis backs Obama health plan,’ leading readers to believe that Gruber’s work represented outside confirmation. The DNC didn’t flinch at that description, sending around an email on the 29th with the subject line: ‘MIT Analysis backs Obama Health Plan’….

“On the 29th Nancy-Ann DeParle, head of the very White House Office of Health Reform that Gruber was hired to consult for, posted perhaps the most misleading column of all on the White House blog….

“She identified Gruber as an ‘MIT Economist who has been closely following the health insurance reform process’ who had ‘issued a compelling new report.’…

“On November 30th…Harry Reid took to the floor of the Senate…, saying ‘just a few days ago an MIT economist -- one of the nation’s foremost economists -- a man by the name of Jonathan Gruber, analyzed our bill and concluded it will help Americans pay less and get more.’

“…Nancy Pelosi touted ‘the Gruber analysis’ on the Speaker's website.

“On December 3, Kathleen Sebelius released a statement…[and] substantiated [her] claims…by citing Gruber’s November 3 testimony before the HELP Committee….No mention that he was a contractor to HHS….

“On December 28, Gruber published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post -- in which he neglected to mention his contract to consult with the White House on this very issue. He was asked point-blank if he had any contracts related to the piece for which he was being paid, and he said ‘no.’”

In other words, an overwhelming number of the ostensibly independent statements or scores that were made or published in support of Obamacare —from Krugman, Klein, Brownstein, the DNC, Reid, Pelosi, Sebelius, and even, to a significant degree, the CBO itself — were traceable to the support of one man and his model. And that man was Jonathan Gruber, who was secretly under contract with the Obama administration.

Perhaps it’s time to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a winning conservative alternative that would lower costs, secure liberty, and make it possible for any American who wants to buy health insurance to be able to do so. And perhaps it’s time to make sure that Jonathan Gruber’s influence over the CBO’s scoring of Obamacare, and of Obamacare alternatives, doesn’t extend into the next Congress.

[Soul Crusher]

Obama addressed MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s comments for the first time on Sunday.

“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama said at a press conference in Australia, Politico reports.

In an interview with PBS in 2012, Gruber said he discussed the Cadillac tax with Obama at the White House.

As Slate’s John Dickerson reported on Friday, Obama prominently acknowledged Gruber’s role in helping craft the law in the past.

Gruber’s role was further explicated by a former adviser to Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of Health and Human Services.

“I remember many a call to Jonathan Gruber about his expertise in Massachusetts as we were formulating the plan,” said Neera Tanden, who is currently the president of the Center for American Progress, in 2012.

Asked Sunday if he misled the public in order to get the federal health care bill passed, Obama said “No. I did not.”

“I would just advise every press outlet here: Pull up every clip and every story. I think it’s fair to say there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent,” Obama said, according to Politico. “It was a tough debate.”

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Skip to comments.

Gruber-gate gets to Obama: ‘No, I did not’ mislead Americans (Says the Liar in Chief)
Hotair.com ^ | November 16, 2014 | NOAH ROTHMAN
Posted on November 16, 2014 at 5:22:42 PM EST by Kaslin

All the president’s men could not shield the commander-in-chief from fallout surrounding recently uncovered comments made by Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber.

The health policy and implementation expert who worked closely on the Affordable Care Act and the Massachusetts health care reform law has backed the administration into a corner after it was revealed he repeatedly celebrated the misleading way in which the law was crafted and the “stupidity” of the American voter over whose eyes the wool was pulled.

“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama told reporters in Australia where he is attending a G-20 summit.

When asked directly if he or his administration had, as Gruber insisted, intentionally misled the public and oversight organizations like the Congressional Budget Office when they crafted the Accordable Care Act, Obama’s reply was terse and direct. “No,” he said. “I did not.”

Obama was joined on Sunday by Health and Human Services Sec. Sylvia Burwell who appeared on Meet the Press to distance herself and the administration from Gruber.

“I have to start with how fundamentally I disagree with his comments about the bill and about the American people,” she began emphatically.

Burwell was, however, not asked to respond to those comments. She was asked by moderator Chuck Todd about whether what Gruber said about “mislabeling” new taxes on health insurance plans as fees was true.

Neither the secretary nor Obama addressed Gruber’s charge directly because it is impossible to deny its accuracy.

It is not the first time the president has been pulled into a controversy over the implementation of Obamacare. After weeks of controversy following a cascade of Americans who lost their individual coverage plans which were not compliant with new Obamacare regulations last year, the president was forced to issue a personal apology.

“I am sorry that they– you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me,” Obama told Todd in the fall of 2013.

Just days after Obama issued this apology, however, it was revealed that the president was aware that millions of noncompliant plans would be cancelled. Despite his apology for the incorrect assertion Obama made on numerous occasions, that you could keep your plan if you liked your plan, the administration knew this was not true.

“That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them,” NBC News reported.

Anyone who followed the Obamacare debate in 2009 and 2010 is already aware that Obama was not being truthful when he denied that the ACA was written to evade scrutiny. Though noting that it is an imperfect feature of the American system, intellectually honest liberals who support the law are already defending the lamentable practice of deceptively crafting legislation so that it avoids creating controversy.

So how long will it be before Barack Obama is forced to walk back his definitive declaration that he never knew the ACA was crafted so as to mislead the people’s representatives who passed it?

[Soul Crusher]

nother ObamaCare Deception

As Jonathan Gruber knows, the health-care law is a tax machine. The ‘Cadillac’ levy will hit the middle class.
 


 




   ENLARGE   
 David Klein 
.

By
Tevi Troy
 
Nov. 16, 2014 6:12 p.m. ET
 
 308 COMMENTS   
 
Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, is making himself a household name, and not in a good way. A series of videos have emerged in recent days showing Mr. Gruber—an architect of the Affordable Care Act—telling college audiences that major parts of the law were designed purposely to mask its true cost to individual Americans.

As Mr. Gruber put it, speaking last year at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

One example cited by Mr. Gruber is the so-called Cadillac tax, as the ObamaCare excise tax on high-value employer health plans is known. The tax, which he helped devise and will take effect in 2018, imposes a 40% levy on individual health plans worth more than $10,200, and on family plans worth more than $27,500. As Mr. Gruber’s remarks were unearthed last week, economist Mark Wilson and I released a study of the excise tax that shows he is right about its deceptive design. The tax is likely to hit many people who don’t have high-end coverage.

Mr. Gruber says in one video that his real aim was to reduce the tax break available to those who get employer-sponsored insurance, about 170 million Americans. He lamented that it would be hard to persuade Congress to reduce people’s tax breaks: “You just can’t get through. It’s politically impossible.” True enough—the excise tax does the job instead. It is a stealthy way to reduce the tax preference for health care without taking it away from employers.

Mr. Gruber also noted that the real impact of the tax would fall on individual Americans: “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” In another video that surfaced on Friday, he explained that the only way to get rid of the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance was “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

Our study bears this out. While the tax is designed to be paid by companies, employees or consumers will see significant increases in costs. These cost increases will be passed on in several ways. Large employers who are subject to the excise tax in 2018 will pay an average of more than $2,700 per employee a year from 2018 to 2024. As Mr. Gruber admits, and basic economics confirms, this cost will be passed on to consumers or to employees in higher prices and lower compensation.

Employers, being rational actors, will not want to pay these taxes and will reduce their health-care benefits to limit their potential exposure to the tax. Doing this will cause employees to be hit by the excise tax in at least two other ways. If employers increase taxable wages to compensate for reducing the value of their plans, then employees will be paying more in taxes for the same compensation levels, and more after-tax out-of-pocket expenses for their health care.

From 2018 to 2024, the excise tax could cost 12.1 million employees an average $1,050 in higher payroll and income taxes a year, if employers increase their taxable wages as they reduce the cost of health-care benefits. Alternatively, if employers only reduce the value of their offerings without increasing wages and salaries, these employees could see up to a $6,150 reduction in their health-care benefits and little or no increase in pay.

Mr. Gruber also implicitly acknowledged that calling the excise tax a “Cadillac” tax is misleading, as the tax’s reach will expand. “Over time it’s gonna apply to more and more health-insurance plans,” he said, elaborating in a separate speech that the “tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years [to] essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer-sponsored plans.”

This means that eventually the excise tax will affect an increasing number of workers who don’t have top-flight health insurance. By 2031 the cost of the average family health-care plan is expected to hit the excise-tax threshold. The tax’s creeping reach is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally designed to hit only the wealthiest taxpayers but now nails the middle class.

The all-too-candid MIT economist is not likely to have a hard time paying for his own health care—Mr. Gruber reportedly received $400,000 for advising the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act. But he is having a hard time explaining his unguarded comments about the law. His views may be obnoxious, but Mr. Gruber has performed a public service by finally telling the truth about ObamaCare and providing a glimpse of the mind-set of those who foisted it on the country. The American people are smart enough to see Mr. Gruber and the Affordable Care Act for what they are.

Mr. Troy is the president of the American Health Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

[Soul Crusher]

Health-Care Reform
Liberal Arrogance at the Core of Obamacare

Lanhee Chen
comments icon443 time iconNov 14, 2014 10:14 AM EST
By  Lanhee Chen   





Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has gotten in trouble for remarks that applaud -- in the words of Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Jose DelReal -- “the deliberatively deceptive way” the health-care law was written to get it passed in Congress.

Gruber's comments, made over the last several years, reveal a disdain for the American voter (whom he described as stupid) and for people's ability to understand the policy discussions that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and his fellow liberal wonks engaged in when they crafted the Affordable Care Act.

But none of us should be surprised by his perspective. Liberal thinkers and policy-makers have never believed that individuals can manage their own health care. This is why they’ve said government should be involved in even our most basic health-care decisions, such as what benefits an insurance plan must include.

This viewpoint also explains their opposition to options that give consumers greater power over their own medical care, such as health-savings accounts, and their rejection of reforms that increase private competition and enhance consumer choice in Medicare.

The paternalism is warranted, they argue, because without the government, people would fall prey to big, bad corporate interests and their efforts to relentlessly maximize shareholder value.

Thus, Obamacare is all about the federal government making decisions on behalf of Americans because -- as Gruber and his liberal brethren would argue -- the people are unable or unwilling to make the choices that elites believe advance the social good. That’s why President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress invented the mechanisms in the law that, for example, transfer resources from those who are young and healthy to those who are old and sick.

Gruber apologized for his incendiary and arrogant comments. But the sentiment behind them is something I doubt he'll ever apologize for.

To contact the author on this story:
  Lanhee Chen   at lchen301@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor on this story:
  Katherine Roberts   at kroberts29@bloomberg.net

[Soul Crusher]

Train Wrecks, Lies, and Videotape

Jonathan Gruber reminds us why we hate Obamacare.

By David Catron – 11.17.14
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An important point has been buried in the avalanche of commentary about Jonathan Gruber’s indictment of the electorate as intellectually deficient. The “father of Obamacare,” as he was known in his salad days, inadvertently acquitted nearly half of us with his reference to “the stupidity of the American voter.” The professor’s condescending comments can only apply to those people who actually believed the empty promises our President made on behalf of his health care “reform” law. A large plurality of the voters always knew that Obama, his congressional accomplices, and creepy little hirelings like Jonathan Gruber were lying to us.

As for the voters who believed all the misrepresentations, they were more credulous than stupid. Though it was obvious to millions of us that the ironically named Affordable Care Act was never going to increase access to care while also improving quality and decreasing cost, Obama’s supporters thought he was a “post-partisan” politician who could be trusted. They failed to subject his implausible claims to serious scrutiny and therefore missed what was wrong with the rosy picture he was painting. It is these voters who should be most insulted by Gruber’s remarks. It is their naïveté that the President and his co-conspirators cynically exploited.

Inevitably, some of these voters have finally opened up their eyes, and they are not at all happy with what they see. Among them is Burke Beu, a lifelong Democrat who recently described his rude awakening in the Wall Street Journal: “I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, then lost my job in the Great Recession… I voted for President Obama again in 2012, then received a cancellation notice for my health insurance.” And he has not been taken in by White House propaganda concerning the source of his employment and insurance travails. He places the blame precisely where it belongs: “This was due to Obamacare, the so-called Affordable Care Act.”

 

 
Regarding Gruber, Beu reacts with understandable outrage: “Now we learn in videos that came to light this week that Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and a key architect of the Affordable Care Act, proudly relied on his perceived ‘stupidity of the American voter’ as the basis for designing ObamaCare.” And, the good professor’s opinion notwithstanding, Beu is intelligent enough to know that this snide comment is aimed at all of the voters: “Such comments, along with the program’s notoriously dysfunctional website and false assurances that people can keep their previous health plans, are insults to every citizen regardless of party.”

Stories like Beu’s have played out countless times across the country. This unquestionably played a role in the drubbing the Democrats just received and, in a sublime manifestation of poetic justice, it also caused the Gruber videos to surface. Most of the six now in circulation, including the original “stupid voters” clip, were found by investment advisor Rich Weinstein. Like Beu, Weinstein believed Obama’s “you can keep your insurance” lie. Thus, when his coverage was canceled and he was “forced to buy compliant insurance at double the price,” he “got pissed” and began the research that eventually uncovered the incriminating videos.

Now that their deceptions have cost them Congress, disillusioned their supporters, and sown the dragon’s teeth that produced a legion of damning videos, how has the Obama administration and its congressional partners decided to deal with the situation? By telling more lies, of course. Nancy Pelosi actually claimed that she had never heard of Dr. Gruber. This was… well… stupid. As Emily Zanotti pointed out in this space last week, “Pelosi herself dropped Gruber's name in an interview about the ACA back in November of 2009.” Also, his name was apparently featured prominently in a Pelosi’s press release, which has now vanished from her website.

For its part, the White House is now denying that Gruber played a significant role in designing the health care law. In fact, on Sunday morning, the President himself reiterated this transparent lie as follows: “The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run.” The President evidently believes the reporters traveling with him are also stupid. And he may well be correct in their case. Not one of them asked how such an unimportant adviser got into the White House meeting during which the deceptive “Cadillac Tax” was concocted.

Nor did any of them ask Obama how such a bit player managed to get so heavily involved with his DOJ in the IRS subsidies case, King v. Burwell, that the Supreme Court has recently taken up. As Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute pointed out last month, “Gruber has been cited in every single previous government brief in King, and in the government’s major filings in Halbig.” Oddly enough, however, he is missing from any Obama administration filing made since his incriminating videos began appearing. Apparently, the government lawyers are under the impression that the Supremes are just as dull-witted as Gruber finds the voters.

There was never a chance that Obamacare would provide universal coverage, but it will take universal stupidity to save it. Conservatives who have always opposed it will have to be stupid enough to stop pushing for repeal, disillusioned progressives will have to be stupid enough to accept broken promises and exorbitant insurance premiums, and the Supreme Court will have to be stupid enough to rule that the meaning of PPACA has no connection with its text. Jonathan Gruber has finally done the nation a service. He has reminded us of the deceptions that got Obamacare passed and demonstrated how much its authors despise ordinary Americans.

[dario73]

HEHEHEHEEH!

Pelosi and the clowninchief claiming that they don't know who Gruber is or that he had no role in crafting crapcare.

Bunch of lying idiots. And the bigger idiots are the morons who keep voting for the democratic party.

[Soul Crusher]

Bob Schieffer to Gruber: If Obamacare Is As Bad As You Say, Then Give Back Money You Made As Advisor




BOB SCHIEFFER: I was dumbstruck when I heard the comments that are surfacing from an economist named Jonathan Gruber, who was paid four hundred thousand dollars to help shape the President's health care plan. First, he allowed his health plan passed only because of a lack of transparency and this is a direct quote, "the stupidity of the American people." Then Friday our Nancy Cordes found a couple of other things he said going back to 2011.

 JONATHAN GRUBER: First by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people and we all know it's really a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.

 BOB SCHIEFFER: And there was this about Massachusetts health care plan.

 JONATHAN GRUBER: The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the Feds pay for our bill. Okay. Ted Kennedy and smart people in Massachusetts had basically figured out way to sort of rip off the Feds for about four hundred million dollars a year.

 BOB SCHIEFFER: I'll be honest, while I favor health insurance, I am not wild about the new plan and how it became law either. But here is my question for Mister Gruber. If all this was as bad as you say, why did you take the money you earned as an advisor, nor is it too late to give it back? What we have here is another example of the sorry state of American politics where people take money for things in which they don't believe and whether it's good for the American people is not even a question. As for the President he may want to consider that old politician's prayer, Lord, I can take care of my enemies; just protect me from my friends.

[240 is Back]

33, Do you think there's a chance that obama is falling on the Gruber grenade - all these tapes coming out - on purpose?

As in, he is giving mcconnell the political cover to give obama his bloated spending budget for another year?
In exchange, obama plays the lame-duck fool in the press... giving FOX a nice story, giving right-wing repubs some red meat for the base, giving getbiggers vindication... we're all debating this, all over again..

In the meantime, as politico points out, mcconnell is out of the TedCruz attacks, and mcconnell is giving obama his $$$
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-mitch-mcconnell-112919.html?hp=t1_r

In another week, we've all moved on from "gruber" and obama/congress have their spending in place for another bloated budget year - and we didn't even notice. 

What do you think, 33?   Bush did it all the time - issued warnings to overlap bad political stories.   Obama does these 'racial slip ups' every time he has something shady to do, and we all scream about beer summits while everyone quietly agrees to another 3 trillion dollars in debt. 

Your thoughts?  Are we foolish to focus on 'told ya so' on something permanent like obamacare, while something that can change now - the horrible budget - is quietly sneaking thru?

[Soul Crusher]

More CT's.   

Its not a one week story - Communist Care as a story is never going away until its repeaeled one way or another. 

[240 is Back]

More CT's.   
Its not a one week story - Communist Care as a story is never going away until its repeaeled one way or another. 

Okay.   But will you agree that obama has, in the past, used Beer summits and freguson and trayvon to keep our eyes off og monster spending and other shady shit?

Like, maybe he's happy about Gruber in the news because fewer people are talking about AMNESTY?


Such timing, no?    A US Prez releases the BIGGEST exec order in HISTORY?   OPENING BORDERS when the congress and nation are against it - but the big 4 news stories on http://www.foxnews.com/ are

1) Ebola 2) obamacare 3) Gruber 4) Ferguson.

You're telling me that ONE DOC dying of ebola, or ONE TOWN THAT MIGHT RIOT is more important/significant than amnesty being forced?


Surely, you can't call this a CT.  Surely you don't overlook the BENEFIT to obama  - were screaming about ferguson (great timing) and Gruber (amazing timing) while what is happening?  AMNESTY!

Please, you're smarter than these fcking lemmings, dude.   You know it's not a CT, you know it's beyond obvious.   FOX news doesn't have amnesty on their front page - and it's days away from 5 million new citizens.   Please, tell me you're not falling for it.

[Soul Crusher]

Of course - but some of us can focus on more than 1 thing at once. 

Okay.   But will you agree that obama has, in the past, used Beer summits and freguson and trayvon to keep our eyes off og monster spending and other shady shit?

Like, maybe he's happy about Gruber in the news because fewer people are talking about AMNESTY?


Such timing, no?    A US Prez releases the BIGGEST exec order in HISTORY?   OPENING BORDERS when the congress and nation are against it - but the big 4 news stories on http://www.foxnews.com/ are

1) Ebola 2) obamacare 3) Gruber 4) Ferguson.

You're telling me that ONE DOC dying of ebola, or ONE TOWN THAT MIGHT RIOT is more important/significant than amnesty being forced?


Surely, you can't call this a CT.  Surely you don't overlook the BENEFIT to obama  - were screaming about ferguson (great timing) and Gruber (amazing timing) while what is happening?  AMNESTY!

Please, you're smarter than these fcking lemmings, dude.   You know it's not a CT, you know it's beyond obvious.   FOX news doesn't have amnesty on their front page - and it's days away from 5 million new citizens.   Please, tell me you're not falling for it.