ObamaCare architect says lack of transparency helped law pass, cites 'stupidity of the American voter'

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Patrick Howley - The Daily Caller


http://i.imgur.com/tOJGEq8.jpg

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber said that lack of transparency was a major part of getting Obamacare passed because “the stupidity of the American voter” would have killed the law if more people knew what was in it.

Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during Obamacare’s design, also made clear during a panel quietly captured on video that the individual mandate, which was only upheld by the Supreme Court because it was a tax, was not actually a tax.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

[The video was from an Oct. 17, 2013 event hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.]

[RBP]

:facepalm:

[perrhaps]

No surprise here. The stupidity of the America voter elected Obama to begin with.

[RBP]

No surprise here. The stupidity of the America voter elected Obama to begin with.
Twice

[perrhaps]

You don't have to rub it in.

[FBD]

I emphatically disagree that it was "the stupidity of the american voter" that allowed this to happen. The media apparatus was instructed to assist the government in presenting this to the public, it was truly a sham of the highest order, involving all 4 branches of the government, from executive to legislative to judicial to media. All extremely common sense observations - basically everything this asshole admitted - was put up by republicans and other sane individuals and parties - and was entirely ignored. The government has positioned itself to purposefully keep the general population dumbed down, but if the american people were told the truth and didnt have a huge amount of entities who "have told them the truth and have been reporting the troof for their entire lives" ....then you bet your ass the american people would have made the right choice.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in an alternate reality where America has a direct democratic republic and not a 100% representative, where each person's vote counts on actual measure and not just which sock puppet gets sent up to the big house to give the appearance of doing the people's bidding.

THEN see "how stupid the average voter" is.

Because the people have no vote, no representation whatsoever. That's why things are fucked up. And they blame it on average Joe being stupid!!! :roll:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

No, I think he's saying that it's good that the American people didn't get a chance to know what's in the law because the law is 'good for the people' and that we (the voters) are too stupid to know that and if we (the voters) had known what was in the law, it wouldn't have passed.

[FBD]

I didnt actually watch the vid of what he said :D just read the yaddayadda headlines

[FBD]

so can this be finally repealed now that yet another conspiracy theory turned conspiracy fact is known and its revealed they 100% lied through their teeth to get this....

"declared as a law"
because I can in no way shape or form say with a straight face that "this bill 'passed' any sort of normal legislative procedure"

[DemonGeminiX]

I'm putting this guy on my death list next year. :)

[Griffin]

No surprise here. The stupidity of the America voter elected Obama to begin with.

Twice

I can't believe that people still think there is a legitimate electoral process.

[deebakes]

:broken record:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX News


ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber said Tuesday he regrets saying that the health care law was written in a way that took advantage of the “the stupidity of the American voter,” adding he spoke “inappropriately.”

Gruber spoke to MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow after a video of his 2013 comments made waves online on Monday.

The Daily Caller reported that the MIT professor, who served as a consultant to the Obama administration as it constructed the health care overhaul, told a panel at the University of Pennsylvania that a lack of transparency was essential to getting the law passed.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” he said. “If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Gruber told Farrow that he is sorry for how he phrased his comments.

“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” he said. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments.”

Gruber said he was trying to say that the architects of ObamaCare took into account the fact that “spending is typically less politically palatable than policy that involves doing things through the tax code.”

“It would have made more sense to do ObamaCare the way we did in Massachusetts, which would be to just actually give people money to offset the cost of their health insurance,” he said. “That was politically infeasible, and so instead it was done through the tax code and that’s the only point I was making.”

[FBD]

Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh :slap:

just say it asshole, I spoke the truth when I thought noone was going to hear it outside the room I was in

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh :slap:

just say it asshole, I spoke the truth when I thought noone was going to hear it outside the room I was in

:agreed:

Exactly, he doesn't regret saying it, he regrets that he got caught.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX News


ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber apparently doesn't think much of the intelligence of the American people.

A new tape has surfaced showing Gruber, once again, claiming the health care law's authors took advantage of the "stupid" American public.

The tape, played on Fox News' "The Kelly File," showed Gruber speaking at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis.

Referring to the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-end health plans, he said: "They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference."

Gruber specifically was referring to the way the "Cadillac tax" was designed -- he touted their plan to, instead of taxing policy holders, tax the insurance companies that offered them. He suggested that taxing individuals would have been politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn't understand the difference.

This is similar to remarks he made at a separate event around the same time in 2013. In a clip of that event, Gruber said the "lack of transparency" in the way the law was crafted was critical. "Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass," he said.

After the first tape surfaced -- prompting Republican outrage -- Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret. On Tuesday, he said: "I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments."

But after Fox News played the second tape, GOP lawmakers said it proves what they've been saying all along.

"It confirms people's greatest fear about the government," Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News on Wednesday. "Remember, it was Nancy Pelosi who said first you have to pass it before you get to find out what's in it.

"We knew it was written in a way that it was really deliberately written to deceive the American people, and now people are paying the price."

As Congress returns for a lame-duck session, on the heels of midterm elections where Republicans won control of the Senate, GOP leaders say they will try once again next year to repeal the law -- or least change its most controversial provisions.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., blasted Gruber on Tuesday.

"I can't even get past the irony of that to even get to the arrogance of him calling our fellow citizens stupid," he told Fox News, referring to the administration's past transparency pledges.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

On Tuesday, he said: "I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments."


Oh, in that case, no problem

[FBD]

that man should be publicly flogged in front of the washington momument

[perrhaps]

that man should be publicly flogged in front of the washington momument

I'd rather slip him a Mickey; pin twenty $100.00 bills on his clothes, and drop him off around Midnight this Saturday in a Southside Chicago alley.

[FBD]

oh I didnt know we were getting creative :excellent:

[RBP]

I'd rather slip him a Mickey; pin twenty $100.00 bills on his clothes, and drop him off around Midnight this Saturday in a Southside Chicago alley.

For 2 grand? I am pretty drug resistant and know my way around the city pretty well. :-k

Pros, cons, cons, pros...

:-k

:-k

http://i.imgur.com/h7TBoqS.jpg

[perrhaps]

For 2 grand? I am pretty drug resistant and know my way around the city pretty well. :-k

Pros, cons, cons, pros...

:-k

:-k

http://i.imgur.com/h7TBoqS.jpg

You understand that if you get caught, the "poor, deprived inner-city youth" defense isn't available to you, right?

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:lol:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Chuck Ross - The Daily Caller


A third video has surfaced of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragging about pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public in order to help implement Obamacare.

“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012.

He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

In an effort to add a cost-control measure to Obamacare, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who Gruber called a “hero,” successfully pushed through a 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies for plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,000 for families.

This was an alternative to putting a cap on tax breaks employers provide employees for health insurance plans, which, according to Gruber, the public mistook for a tax increase rather than the removal of a tax break.

“You just can’t get through, it’s just politically impossible,” Gruber said during his talk.

The purpose of the Cadillac tax is to force the “overinsured” — people with expensive health insurance plans — to cut back on “excess benefits.” Many economists believe that such plans cause inefficiencies in the health-care system. The Cadillac tax, which will be implemented in 2018, is projected to save $250 billion.

Gruber has made remarks before in which he espouses a dim view of the American public while discussing the deception behind passing both the Cadillac tax and Obamacare in general.

The first instance came to light on Sunday when a video was published showing Gruber telling a University of Pennsylvania health-care panel that Obamacare was “written in a tortured way” and that it passed, in part, because it was difficult to understand.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass,” Gruber said at the November 2013 event.

The discoverer of the video was not a journalist or a political operative, but, rather, a financial planner who was one of the millions of Americans who lost his insurance plan last year despite President Obama’s pledge that “if you like your plan, you can keep it, period.”

Gruber, who was paid $400,000 to consult on Obamacare, backtracked from those remarks on MSNBC on Tuesday, saying that they were “off the cuff.” (RELATED: Obamacare Architect Gruber: I Regret Calling The American People ‘Stupid’)

But the randomness of Gruber’s remarks was cast into doubt Tuesday night when Fox News’ Megyn Kelly revealed a second video that also shows the professor discussing the Cadillac tax in a speech at Washington University in St. Louis in October 2013. (RELATED: Yet Another Video Emerges Of Obamacare Architect Calling Americans ‘Stupid’)

Gruber said that the kludge worked because “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference” between capping subsidies and taxing insurance companies.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

What a great guy

[Griffin]

Anybody else feel like the Obummer administration is capitalizing on a scapegoat to remove themselves from involvement of this fiasco?

[RBP]

Anybody else feel like the Obummer administration is capitalizing on a scapegoat to remove themselves from involvement of this fiasco?

If that were the case, the media would be feeding it, not running away from it.

Media blackout shields ObamaCare architect who bet on public stupidity

I’ve been trying to figure out why the mainstream media has all but decided to ignore one of ObamaCare’s chief architects saying the administration played on the public’s stupidity in passing the law.

After all, the press usually loves when hidden video surfaces, as it did this week with MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, and we get unvarnished comments showing what someone really and truly believes.

And yet there hasn’t been a mention on the network evening newscasts. CNN's Jake Tapper, to his credit, played the clip twice, asked two senators about it and wrote an online column on the subject, but that was about it for the network. Nothing in the Washington Post but for a couple of online items. (Update: The Washington Post finally got around to covering the controversy today, three days after it broke.) Not a word in the New York Times, which in 2012 ran a puffy profile of Gruber (“It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance”).

This is utterly inexplicable, except as a matter of bias. No matter what you think of ObamaCare, on what planet is this not news? Maybe on that comet where the spaceship just landed.

I tried to think of the possible excuses. Too busy covering other stories? Hey, nobody in America has Ebola anymore! The only real competition is a big winter storm and Eminem disgustingly dropping F-bombs at HBO’s Veterans Day concert.

Was Gruber’s point about health care taxes and mandates too complicated? Then explain it. Besides, it isn't that this argument never came up before; it's that Gruber fesses up to the attempt at deception.

Even MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who makes no secret of being a liberal, admitted yesterday that “had it been a Republican, the media would have been exploding.”

And yet MSNBC’s coverage in the previous two days basically consisted of Ronan Farrow doing a softball sitdown with Gruber. Now I’ve tried to avoid taking cheap shots at Farrow, a guy with zero journalistic experience, who worked for the administration, and who’s basically on the air because he’s Mia Farrow’s son (and maybe Frank Sinatra’s son). But this was a farce.

“I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments,” Gruber said.

Did Farrow ask what was inappropriate? Did he ask whether the comments were true? Nope, he carried the professor’s water:

“But the point you were making underneath the choice of words was actually quite nuanced. You were saying, correct me if I’m wrong, that due to political pressure the language of ObamaCare had to be somewhat opaque.”

Somewhat opaque, I love that. Also known as being highly misleading and pulling the wool over people’s eyes.

Let’s review: Gruber, a highly paid administration consultant, said this at an academic conference a year ago:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes…Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Stupidity. Really critical. And where is the rest of the press?

Now Fox has certainly given the story heavy rotation, and conservatives on the network and elsewhere have jumped on the tape, and a second one that soon surfaced, to discredit the Affordable Care Act. Gruber’s comments don’t prove that the program is a mess or isn’t working. They show that the administration was counting on public ignorance to pass it.

In another interview, on Boston’s WGBH, Gruber didn’t argue with host Emily Rooney’s characterization that he had admitted to “intentional obfuscation.” In fact, he’s not really taking back what he said at all. He said he didn’t want it widely known that “we gave poor people money.” Gruber then pivoted to charge that “the master strategy of the Republican Party” is “to confuse people enough about the law so that they don’t understand that the subsidies they’re getting is because of the law.”

That’s a separate debate, but it’s kind of ironic that a guy who pleaded guilty to intentional deception is now accusing the other side of spreading confusion.

All this would seem to be a ripe subject for public debate. But in much of the mainstream media, it’s been blacked out. And that's downright embarrassing.

[FBD]

I dont get it, most of us sat here calling every single one of these as they came down the pipe, with deep telling us we were all batshit crazy, and now that conspiracy theory is conspiracy fact; the government swindles people.

[FBD]

http://clashdaily.com/2014/11/breaking-here-is-jonathan-grubers-health-care-comic-book-stupid-americans/