Jonathan Gruber’s Central (and Well-Paid) Role in Fooling the Public About the Cost of ObamaCare
We previously noted that Jonathan Gruber — the ObamaCare architect who is on video repeatedly saying Democrats fooled the stupid American voters with ObamaCare — was said by the New York Times to have been involved with developing the proposal and helping write the legislation:
After Mr. Gruber helped the administration put together the basic principles of the proposal, the White House lent him to Capitol Hill to help Congressional staff members draft the specifics of the legislation.
The hacks at Scott Lemieux’s (further fallout from my unwise wading into their comment section) point out that the next sentence says:
This assignment primarily involved asking his graduate student researchers to tweak his model’s software code.
As if this validates the idea that he was simply a “numbers cruncher” who had nothing to do with the way the law was written.
Let’s put aside the fact for a moment that the article itself says that Gruber (or “Mr. Mandate,” as the article calls him) is essentially single-handedly responsible for the mandate (“It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance.”) Let’s talk about that number-crunching, shall we?
Because it’s the number-crunching that allowed the law’s authors to write it in a way that would fool the CBO and the American people. And he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this.
Ed Morrissey points to a fact-check in the Washington Post in which Glenn Kessler rates as “true” the claim that Gruber earned almost $400,000 from the Obama administration. Kessler adds value by describing Gruber’s number-crunching and what it did for lawmakers:
As the agency put it, “Dr. Gruber developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model that has the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy.”
The model, the Gruber Microsimulation Model, is the coin of the realm, in large part because it is similar to the model used by the Congressional Budget Office. That means administration policy-makers could predict with reasonable certainty how CBO would score legislation. 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.
So it’s clear that part of his job was to disguise the cost of the plan by running models similar to what CBO runs. Remember when he said that “this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure” the Congressional Budget Office “did not score the mandate as taxes”? He was right there with the lawmakers, crunching numbers and working with them to make sure that the language of the law was “tortured” to take advantage of what he calls “the stupidity of the American voter.”
This is not a guy on the outside looking in — although Kessler notes in his fact-check that he often pretended to be, and the White House went along with that deception too:
In one especially fishy circumstance, Nancy-Ann DeParle, at the time the director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote about Gruber’s work on the White House blog on Nov. 29, 2009. “MIT Economist Confirms Senate Health Reform Bill Reduces Costs and Improves Coverage” was the headline on the post.
DeParle made no reference to the fact that Gruber had already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars working for the administration. She described him as “a MIT economist who has been closely following the health insurance reform process.”
The deception in the presentation of the law’s costs was both breathtaking and commonplace. For example: remember how the law’s benefits oddly didn’t kick in for years? That was deliberate. It was done so the administration could claim that the “10-year cost” of the law was a certain figure. CBO looks out only 10 years, you see, so if you defer the payments, you can deceive the stupid American voter. Neil Irwin had a piece on this in the New York Times a couple of days ago.
[A]s Sarah Kliff notes at Vox, it is also why the law was structured to expand insurance coverage three years after passage. That way its cost estimate by the C.B.O. was kept under $1 trillion during the first decade after enactment. One trillion was the highest number that Democratic leaders thought was politically feasible.
(Irwin noted that our beloved President Bush engaged in similar chicanery with that shiny new prescription drug benefit we got the last time Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.)
Jonathan Gruber had a direct and very well-paid role, not just in crafting this law, but in manipulating its language to disguise its ultimate cost from the American voting public that he holds in such contempt.
Congressional hearings? You bet we need Congressional hearings.
It is easy to picture this guy sitting around the table, day after day, cackling with staffers and occasionally actual lawmakers, all talking about how they could write the language to fool people even better. The contempt he expresses for the voter no doubt reflects an attitude that absolutely pervaded these sessions, on the part of all participants.
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/14/2014 @ 7:41 amWas Gruber involved with the exchanges set up under Romney? Massachusetts…Massachusetts institute of Technology Professor. Might just be a coincidence.
Dejectedhead (393701) — 11/14/2014 @ 7:51 amThis is a from a description from a google search:
“Jonathan Gruber is probably having a hell of a day. … Several years before, in Massachusetts, he had worked with then-Gov. Mitt Romney on the state-level health care reform plan there. … an “off-the-cuff” mistake, an attempt to lay out the way political calculations affected the law as it was being written.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/11/11/who-is-jonathan-gruber/
The page is oddly missing.
Dejectedhead (393701) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:00 am“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44854320/ns/politics-decision_2012/t/white-house-used-mitt-romney-health-care-law-blueprint-federal-law/#.VGYnW_nF_BM
So, he was involved with both. I’d say that totally points to his active involvement in the drafting.
Dejectedhead (393701) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:03 amno way i’d have ever supported obamacare if I’d known the truth
happyfeet (a037ad) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:13 amMIT professor. Ok, that explains it. All the words that fit: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/blowhard
nk (dbc370) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:28 amLet’s be careful not to hitch our wagon too close to this horse.
nk (dbc370) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:30 amGruber deserves the criticism levied on Armstrong Williams; insofar as he was paid for espousing an opinion while presenting himself as a disinterested policy wonk.
Gruber earned about six times the pay, though.
Pouncer (415203) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:33 amNone of this is new to some of us. Anyone with a cursory understanding of insurance knew that …
1) You can’t lower costs unless you reduce MD prices or reduce use of services
2) You can’t cover more medical stuff and reduce costs
3) You can’t improve access to more health care for the lower income without more subsidies in some form.
Only a fucking idiot thought otherwise, but we have so many out there.
So in turn let us get to the truth … this law was about social engineering and not health care or improving it.
1) Use “standardized plan designs” to jack up Deductibles to lower consumption of health care.
2) Use taxes to subsidize some purchase of insurance but not all to screw “the rich”
3) Force Health Care Insurance to be Post Tax benefit versus Pre-Tax to screw everyone
4) Use tax to justify more Govt. No idea how $1 trillion in taxes annually adds up to 6-8MM covered souls via Medicaid or Subsidy. Do the math. Ridiculously expensive coverage on a per person basis.
But this was all known. All of it. Fact we have a punching bag now makes no difference.
Rodney King's Spirit (8b9b5a) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:53 amI lost my plan. Do have standing to sue Gruber?
Jack (a742cc) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:57 amHow was the Gruber model so similar to the CBO model?
What language or program are these model built with?
Is Gruber just really good at guessing CBO’s model — or did he have inside information? Did someone at CBO share details of their model with Gruber, so he could replicate it?
Confused in Jersey (9bf661) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:06 amIt is remarkable that truthful indiscetions can be such powerful antidotes to progressive policy. More experienced progressives, those who are politicians say, learned long ago that it was better to lie all the time about everything, and call it transparency. That way the narrative can remain consistent. The explanation by their apologists in the press for the obvious lying is simply faith in a benign ideology … compassion for the little guy.
LIE, LIE, LIE => orbit achieved
truth => failure to launch
It is true that Republicans saw through these deceptions, but they were marginalized. I recall that EarLeader advised them to go to the back of the bus and shut up. We had a new driver, and HE was going to drive us out of the ditch. In keeping with the credo of lie all the time about everything, HE didn’t mention that HE was going to drive us not back to the road, but over the ledge.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:31 amSo anybody with better photoshop skills than I should run with this.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/599x486q90/743/5bYhYN.jpg
g (f85a02) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:37 amTop men:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/11/US%20strategy%20fighting%20ISIS.jpg
DNF (7e0641) — 11/14/2014 @ 11:18 amDidn’t he get paid a crapload of money by Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont too?
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 11:19 amGruber reminds me of the snarky theoretical physicist who can scrawl out a mile long equation that proves that gravity doesn’t exist. Such was the nature of Gruber’s economic modeling as it relates to ObamaCare. Deception by doublespeak.
Hank (8b57f2) — 11/14/2014 @ 11:29 amIt was the type of cost, not the amount Patterico. This whole story is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” since no one cares whether it’s called a tax or penalty, fee or whatever. It’s all inside baseball unless you’re a economic policy wonk or the CBO.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:03 pmReally?! Hate filled Tillman is back?
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:18 pmNote that our “hero”, John Effin Kerry, was instrumental in obfuscating the “Cadillac Tax.”
Gruber was discussing the law’s so-called “Cadillac tax,” which he said was helped along by “hero” then-Sen. John Kerry. The “Cadillac tax” mandates that insurance companies be taxed rather than policy holders. He said that taxing individuals would have been “politically impossible,” but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn’t understand the difference.
“So basically it’s the same thing,” he said. “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.”
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:21 pmhttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/13/yet-another-video-shows-obamacare-architect-disparaging-voter-intelligence/
How’s it going JD? 🙂
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:23 pmBoy oh boy, as soon as Obama reads about this in the paper, he’s gonna be really, really angry. Just like he was about the IRS targeting conservatives.
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:26 pmProbably not the one you’re thinking of JD, I’m the original.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:27 pmBuh-bye
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:27 pmMy bad
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:28 pmGruber apparently gave Mitt Romney the same advice for spinning RomneyCare: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fgfr1yBmsQ4
RightKlik (ce161e) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:33 pmMitt Romney lacks integrity
and you can’t help him unless he wants to be helped
and he doesn’t want to be helped
happyfeet (a037ad) — 11/14/2014 @ 12:48 pmObamacare must have really sucked when they have to pay millions to get a professor from a top school to say stupid stuff…
Usually they do it for free..
EPWJ (c12453) — 11/14/2014 @ 1:00 pmI found an article on the Heritage foundation’s web site from December 9, 2009 talking (and complainging) about using “penalties” rather than taxes. So this was no secret and debated at the time, before the bill was passed.
Old news… http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/12/why-the-personal-mandate-to-buy-health-insurance-is-unprecedented-and-unconstitutional
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 1:00 pmGruber is a professor at MIT and an employee, apparently. Since we haven’t heard boo from them, can assume that MIT endorses Gruber’s activities?
Tom (8247f7) — 11/14/2014 @ 1:02 pmGruber is a professor at MIT and an employee, apparently. Since we haven’t heard boo from them, can assume that MIT endorses Gruber’s activities?
Did you read Tyler Cowan’s insipid remarks on this? If you’re in the club, they’ll excuse you. The people he snookered are just Emmetts, not People Who Count. To suggest he should suffer some loss from this disgusting behavior is to suggest that members of the club should be evaluated by members outside the club according to extramural standards. Cannot have that.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/14/2014 @ 1:35 pmGruber apparently gave Mitt Romney the same advice for spinning RomneyCare
Gov. Romney was in the business of attempting to resuscitate a ruined market for household insurance and to persuade the Democratic legislature to agree to measures to do so. The context was entirely different. When you have to try to make a bad situation somewhat better and get the opposition on board, you do not produce pristine programs.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/14/2014 @ 1:39 pmTillman – it seems as though you are missing the point. All of these arguments we made previously were dismissed as baseless, racist, Obama-hatred. All of the things we claimed are coming true, and Gruber is outlining how they hid it from the American public. What is left unsaid is how the MFM was complicit in actively helping them do so, by marginalizing dissenting voices.
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:18 pm3-card monty
mg (31009b) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:22 pmnothing up my sleeve
carnival barker
Tillman, you’ve completely missed the point. The lies were meant to give cover to the Democrats in the House and Senate who were being pressured to vote for this piece of garbage. Which is to say, the lies were intended to mislead the Democrat base so that they would continue to support their representatives in DC. The Republicans pointed this out, and were laughed at by the media and the Democrats. The test of being a good Democrat voter is thus shown to be that you can be easily fooled. And Gruber was quite happy to assist in this deception.
bobathome (7da0f6) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:30 pmHis job was also to fool the stupid economists at the CBO.
slp (347e33) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:32 pmJD, I think you’re missing my point – it wasn’t hidden to begin with. Maybe the arguments against it were dismissed, but there was no conspiracy to hide any of it and it’s only water under the bridge now.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:40 pmDo you want to complain that healthy people have to pay for insurance? Well, yeah you know, that’s how insurance works.
I don’t hear of any Death Panels lately, so I have to disagree with your assessment of all the claims that the right made at the time.
Tillman – there absolutely was a conspiracy to hide those aspects from the American people. In the 6 videos to date, he has laid out how it was done. It required the aid of the MFM, which gleefully obliged.
JD (fb69bb) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:46 pmJD, what, exactly, was hidden? I provided an old link showing that it was known that they avoided the CBO counting the funds from being called “taxes.” So that’s out. So where’s the beef?
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 2:51 pmardilla!
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:01 pmThere’s a great writeup by Jane Hamsher at FiredogLake from 2010 on Gruber’s involvement as well, from when the story first broke out: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/13/gruber/
JCC (6ca98d) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:02 pmSixth video – Detailing how the Cadillac Tax will, by mislabeling, eventually reach more and more private employer health insurance policies, thereby eventually “getting rid of” tax exemption for all of them: “In a 2011 conversation about the Affordable Care Act, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the law more commonly known as Obamacare, talked about how the bill would get rid of all tax credits for employer-based health insurance through “mislabeling” what the tax is and who it would hit…. Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance,” Gruber said at the Pioneer Institute for public policy research in Boston. The subsidy is “terrible policy,” Gruber said.
“It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of,” Gruber said. “And the only way we could get rid of it was first 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.”
“What that means is the tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer sponsored plans,” Gruber said. “This was the only political way we were ever going to take on one of the worst public policies in America.”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/14/politics/gruber-update-friday-white-house-obamacare/index.html
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:16 pmI don’t hear of any Death Panels lately,
So what? If you have authoritative rationing by federal panels, that’s what you have.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:19 pmTillman – there absolutely was a conspiracy to hide those aspects from the American people. In the 6 videos to date, he has laid out how it was done.
I think Tillman is in “I say it’s spinach mode” at this point. Time to wrap it up.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:23 pmWalter, this post says nothing about the Cadillac Tax, so I think we’re moving the goal post here. I don’t know much about the Cadillac Tax (yet), but I do know that Gruber gets his facts wrong and/or exaggerates, so I wouldn’t count on that being 100% accurate.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:34 pmArt Deco, so you trust insurance companies to ration your health care? If they don’t cover you, or refuse you because of a pre-existing condition, isn’t that the same thing? In effect, we get rationed, like it or not and that’s why that argument lost in the long run – it was mis-guided to begin with.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:40 pmObamacare was always going to end up a mess. An amalgam of welfare state and free market. A bastard child child belonging to neither. Just like its namesake. From the beginning. Court cases or no court cases. What one thing has the Jug Eared Kenyan clown done right? Name just one.
nk (dbc370) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:48 pmTillman –
Note the first comment by Patterico: “It is easy to picture this guy sitting around the table, day after day, cackling with staffers and occasionally actual lawmakers, all talking about how they could write the language to fool people even better. The contempt he expresses for the voter no doubt reflects an attitude that absolutely pervaded these sessions, on the part of all participants.”
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/14/2014 @ 3:53 pmI think Gruber’s, and the administration’s, perfidy would include how the Cadillac Tax was mislabeled to fool those in Congress who had the time to read the monstrosity as well as the general public. If not, my apologies.
And I think Gruber knows more about how Obamacare was drafted than you do.
One can sue an insurance company, it has been done successfully.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:03 pmTo date, suing the president has proven fruitless.
MD in Philly, most of us in the general public have neither the money nor the know-how to go about suing a giant insurance company with its teams of attorneys. It may have happened a few times, but get real. Most of the time, it just ain’t happening.
Tillman (248cc5) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:07 pmwhat is interesting about Kessler’s piece, is how significant Gruber’s contribution was to the drafting of Obamacare, across the breath of the fruited plain, 4 million in total,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:09 pmBut Obama is a good man just trying to do what he thinks is best for this country.
Every day that looks more and more like an absolute fcking joke.
Mr. Pink (9dc6b0) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:14 pmMr. Pink, I was sure I’d scraped you off my shoe out there on the sidewalk. How did you get on my computer screen?
nk (dbc370) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:18 pmI had a dream last night. It was the State of the Union Speech, and right in the middle, where Obama was talking about how great Obamacare was and how it was helping billions of people, the entire GOP section stood up, yelled “You lying sack of ****!” in unison, then turned and walked out.
Sadly, just a dream.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:20 pmFrom AOSHq, Peter Orzag, Obama’s Budget Director in 2009, talks about how they couldn’t be “direct” about the Cadillac Tax taking away the employer health care insurance tax exemption because “others” [read “McCain”] had campaigned on the direct [read “honest”] approach and it would have been “awkward” to approach the subject honestly and openly. That’s especially true since Obama beat McCain over the head for his honest approach, while working on plans to do exactly what McCain proposed, but lying about it. http://ace.mu.nu/
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/14/2014 @ 4:28 pmHmmm, something pretty tame just was eaten by wordpress.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/14/2014 @ 5:03 pmAll of these videos have been around for years, but never could gain any traction with the media. How about this one, where ACA architect Hacker says that single-payer health care is the goal of the bill and that it isn’t even a Trojan horse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sTfZJBYo1I
skh.pcola (acd70d) — 11/14/2014 @ 5:07 pmyes, that’s a classic one, Barney Frank, the Sutton in Sutton/Dillinger, and Mrs. Robert Creamer, Schakowsky said much the same thing,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/14/2014 @ 5:12 pmThe fact that conservatives knew about it at the time proves what exactly?
Gerald A (d65c67) — 11/14/2014 @ 6:24 pmI have a great deal more sympathy for Jonathan Gruber than it appears most of you have. Let us not forget that Mr. Gruber was a paid consultant merely following orders from on high. Probably for the first time in his sheltered academic life, Gruber got an inside look at how political sausage is made at the highest levels of our government, which, not surprisingly, is little different from how it is made at the lowest levels. Poor Mr. Gruber, the bumbling academic, simply lacks the real world sophistication to shut up about what he has seen and participated in.
Are any of you really shocked by what Mr. Gruber has been saying? Apparently Glen Beck wasn’t. I’m not. Most of the people I know who work in and around government have similar stories to tell. They aren’t shocked. How many among us have had at least one firsthand experience with the government acting corruptly? Every one of us, I’d bet. Are you shocked? The reason we haven’t heard much outrage from Republicans and there won’t be congressional hearings about this is that most Republicans carry around the same sort of dirty laundry. The temptation of the Gruber kerfuffle is to view the experience he describes in isolation. These were not isolated acts. They are part of a pattern. This is simply how government works.
The Gruber revelations are good news. It pleases me when a Gruber steps forward and reminds us all of the corruption that is an integral part of government. It is the reason that government is beyond reform and must be downsized; the only way to reduce the corruption of government is to reduce the size of government. As a practical matter, Gruber is a hero for going on the record about his experiences. Thank you, Mr. Gruber.
ThOR (130453) — 11/14/2014 @ 6:32 pmThOR- no, we are not really shocked at all, it’s just that rarely do we get our suspicions validated with documentation.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/14/2014 @ 7:20 pmWe do sometimes wonder whether “they” really believe what they are saying or just being deceitful, usually figuring some of both.
Yes, thanks to Mr. Gruber, hopefully he can quickly make some new friends after some of his old ones give him a cold shoulder.
I love it.
The Dems come out with a pack of lies.
The GOP says “You lie!”
The Dems and press (BIRM) all say “How dare you!”.
blah blah blah
The Dems are shown to have been lying.
The GOP says “You LIED!”
The Dems and press (BIRM) all say “It was just bad luck.”
blah blah blah
The Dems brain trust admits it was all lies, damn lies and statistics.
The GOP says “Liar liar pants on fire!”
Now the Dem defence: “How can you complain? You knew it was a lie!”
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 11/14/2014 @ 7:37 pmHere’s the thing: Gruber’s remarkably consistent in all these appearances over time.
These are lines he has practices with his cool-kid friends. They’re honed. They’re punch-lines for him, and he’s used to getting laughs with them.
Some part of the normal and traditional Democratic defensive camouflage instinct — that’s their way of thinking about what they do, but the rest of us folks call it “lying” — has been suppressed in this guy, though.
So he kept going for those reliable punchlines even when there were video cameras rolling and he was making very deliberately public performances.
These aren’t random thoughts that were buried in his dry academic discussions. These were core features of Obamacare that could always get a good yuk from the cool kids who enjoyed taking advantage of the gullibility of American voters.
But the things he’s saying were always known, always understood, even by the top Dem legislative sponsors, and certainly all their top staffers. They’re Gruber’s audience that he practiced these routines on!
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/14/2014 @ 8:21 pmHow is it that after six years of spectacularly brazen behavior by our President, his administration and Democrats in congress, conservatives are still having “a-ha moments” about Democratic corruption? Democrats aren’t moving the goalposts; Republicans are. The Gruber story is making a splash in the small puddle that is the conservative blogosphere. Next week, the Republican leadership will deem this the new normal and move on. It doesn’t take an MIT economist to figure out where this will lead.
ThOR (130453) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:17 pmJust when you think it couldn’t possibly get any more richly offensive, there’s Gruber’s Obamacare Comic Book. Spoiler alert: Texas is evil, Massachusetts is good, Obama is divine.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:39 pmThe comic book was back-cover blurbed by, among others Sen. John Kerry and by Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress. The publisher’s note about the author quotes the WaPo as calling Gruber “possibly the [Democratic] party’s most influential health-care expert.” Wow.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/14/2014 @ 9:45 pmI wish I could make a coherent comment, but there are simply no words to describe the nightmare of this administration. I would like the press to do its job, but that is not going to happen. Our newly elected Senate majority has already decided to sit out because Ted Cruz is too embarrassing. What do you do?
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:04 pmHere’s a thought leader of today.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:10 pmWho paid for the publication of this propaganda?
Walter Cronanty (f48cd5) — 11/15/2014 @ 5:01 amAnd John Kerry loves him some Gruber comic book ’cause even dumb, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing American voters like me can understand it: “Having spent years working to make health care work for Americans, Jonathan Gruber has now provided another service: walking everyone through the benefits of the Affordable Care Act reforms so consumers are armed with accessible information. In an age when information is power, Gruber’s book is fun and informative, and it boils down the facts of health care reform for all Americans.” —Senator John Kerry
People seem puzzled that, other than Fox, the mainstream media, other than Fox, are barely, if at all, mentioning the Gruber story, but really, it’s simple: to them, the story that the Obama Administration had nothing but contempt for the intelligence of the American people, and of voters, is not news, not news in the slightest.
The journalist Dana (1b79fa) — 11/15/2014 @ 5:46 amvoting call stroke steamship talisman cerebrospinal tobacco portend pursuant leaflet,sitemap. follows rented tempting universe hear conserve regards soya passe sciolism. appendix stride hard sad neck instructor debug simply psychopathology ravine. heaviness theirs collective assortment weapons bar uninterested parenthesis tannin misleading dialysis. swamp sink basket melody apprentice coin advance fee retributive cumbersome. squabble punctilious surroundings doubtful quiz Egypt pommel glitter. f
sitemap (cb7c93) — 11/16/2014 @ 8:28 pmAnd this is the reason the Bush tax cuts expired in the 10th year and the tax cuts were scheduled to become a pumpkin.
In 2010 the lame duck Congress extended everything for two years and then we had the “fiscal cliff” when that and a couple of other laws were expiring at the end of 2012.
And every year or so – or more often – we have to refix the “doc fix”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/03/31/for-17th-time-in-11-years-congress-delays-medicare-reimbursement-cuts-as-senate-passes-doc-fix
Sammy Finkelman (ae0b12) — 11/16/2014 @ 9:13 pmRodney King’s Spirit @9. What you want to do is reduce costs without reducing quality and freedom of choice (and they go together) and that means prices have to matter (but not too much) The problem is first dollar insurance.
11. Confused in Jersey (9bf661) — 11/14/2014 @ 10:06 am
The CBO model probably wasn’t any big secret, and was probably easy to reverse engineer if there were any secrets. They just could keep submitting ideas to the CBO till they got what they wanted. The thing that might need to be predicted was what the CBO would do when two courses of action were possible. Predicting the CBO rating in advance would just make the whole process go quicker.
Maybe you might need to be a bit careful and not try too many things, so there’s another advantage to a model.
I’m coming to the conclusion that the purpose of creating the state exchanges was to offload the administrative costs onto the states, not to satisfy Senator Ben Nelson (how would no federal exchange do that?) and it amounted to a large sum of money, not just $1 or $2 billion.
Maybe there they had to be careful not to alert the CBO that there was nothing at all that would force states to create exchanges, so they couldn’t be too explicit about the Secretary of HHS running an exchange (let alone provide tax credits for it0
It was not like the Medicaid expansion, which did come with a threat (removed by the Supreme Court)
Sammy Finkelman (ae0b12) — 11/16/2014 @ 9:26 pm