In a newly uncovered video, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admits that a “lack of transparency” was key in getting the Affordable Care Act passed because “the stupidity of the American voter” would have otherwise killed the bill.
From 2009-2010 Gruber, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration during which time he helped craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
During a recent panel discussion, Gruber explained that the characterization of the individual mandate as a tax, which led to the Supreme Court upholding it as such, was not actually a tax at all.
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” stated Gruber. “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,” he added. “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.”
Although it’s widely acknowledged that Obamacare was forced through off the back of broken promises and dirty tricks, to have someone who helped craft the law brazenly admit the fact is still shocking.
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