Video: Obama and Gruber Discussed Cadillac Tax — and They Go Way Back, to 2006
Hypocrisy Day continues here at Patterico, with more hypocrisy on Jonathan Gruber. (JD covers this below — but for non-clickers, which is a lot of you, I want to put it all right in your face.)
“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.
Which made it kind of awkward when a video emerged in which Gruber talked about being in the room with Obama, talking about ways to pass the unpalatable “Cadillac tax” (which, Gruber has explained in a different video, was done through a dishonest sleight of hand:
Oh: also, Obama said as far back as 2006 that he has “liberally” “stolen ideas from” Gruber (and others):
Now, let’s put this latter video in context, in the spirit of fairness and honesty. This is from an April 5, 2006 gathering at the Brookings Institution, when Obama was a Senator. Here is the transcript, which contains the full context of the quote:
That is what I hope we will see from The Hamilton Project in the months and years to come. You have already drawn some of the brightest minds from academia and policy circles, many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from Robert Gordon to Austan Goolsbee; Jon Gruber; my dea friend, Jim Wallis here, who can inform what are sometimes dry policy debates with a prophetic voice. So I know that there are going to be wonderful ideas that are generated as a consequence of this project.
The Hamilton Project, according to the description given in the transcript, was a Brookings Institution project designed to “put together an economic strategy that deals with the issues of the country in the ways that we [“we” meaning Brookings Institution-style lefties — P] all would think sensible.” It appears that Gruber contributed to a paper on “retirement security and easier ways for low income Americans to save.” Health care, in short, while mentioned at the gathering, does not appear to have been a central part of the discussion that day.
That said, the video does show a connection between Obama and Gruber going well back before Obama was even elected. We should not overstate its significance, because that would be the wrong thing to do — but we should also recognize that what the video does tell us is not insignificant.
So: 1) a video in which Gruber relates discussions between Gruber and Obama about health care and how to pass politically unpalatable ideas, and 2) evidence that the Gruber/Obama relationship went back to 2006. Sounds like we’re just talking about “an adviser who was never on our staff”!
Obola lie to us?
unexpectedly!
(now, with added “Ding!”)
redc1c4 (4db2c8) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:17 pmJoined at the hip… the evil, greedy, anti-American Grubama Bros.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:41 pmI can not believe this. I can. not. believe it. Invasion of our relationship with out doctor, our personal health priorities, even our home.
Our insurer has partnered with a data mining company to hector us and our physicians into giving Inovalon personal patient charts. Pestering patients and doctors to handle care in a particular way, get particular tests – and claiming rights to the chart, in every detail.
The insurer is Anthem, the data company is Inovalon.
Here’s what they want with us and our doctor: http://www.anthem.com/ca/provider/f5/s4/t0/pw_e213440.pdf?refer=provider
The have already gotten some pushback from providers: http://www.apapracticecentral.org/update/2014/09-11/anthem-hipaa.aspx
“On Sept. 5, 2014, APAPO and CPA sent Anthem a joint letter (PDF, 104KB) expressing concerns about complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) minimum necessary rule and state law. The main concern is the organizations believe that they need to better understand what information Anthem legitimately needs under the ACA so that psychologists do not have to produce more than the minimum necessary information.”
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:45 pmThe ACA needs to die right now.
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:46 pmWelcome to the wonderful world of Obamacare quality metrics, Sarah. Your doctor will be fined if he doesn’t provide the data to your overlords.
Steve57 (c4b0b3) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:52 pmWell he is a consultant. Not on staff..
But other than that bit of circumlocution it is probaly all a bunch of BS
steveg (794291) — 11/17/2014 @ 6:54 pmObama is a guy who is used to people adoring him so much that he can lie and just ignore the people who throw the BS flag.
He just says “I didn’t know” and moves on acts like any dissent is an unfair maybe racist attack and it usually just goes away.
I have a hope that this signature act of Obamacare will unravel more and more over history and he will be exposed as a huge lying fraud
He can get fined by losing his patient altogether if he cooperates.
I’ll file harassment charges against inovalon if they call more than once after being instructed never to call me again, or contact my private physician.
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:03 pmConsultants have no weight in government! Everyone knows that.
Dan (00fc90) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:04 pmThat seems extreme but they have no right to come near me.
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:04 pmThis is like Salvatore Gravano snitching out John Gotti. What’s there to choose from? The manure-peddling professor of economics or the manure-peddling politician? I’d just hang them both, but some captious persons will always come up with some reason not to.
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:06 pmCan Burwell possibly stick or have the desired effect of undermining this liars law?
All I see is a nightmare future of states caving and agreeing to create exchanges that Obama then air-declares to be backdated for anyone who got a subsidy on the federal exchange.
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:09 pmNot me ,nk. There are plenty of street lights along Pennsylvania Avenue and as far as I’m concerned they should all be adorned with politicians. Especially lying politicians.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:11 pmThe ink is black, the page is white
A horrible plan they joined to write
The Won is black, Teh Grube is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A terrible blight
And now the peeps can’t understand
A sh*tty health law of all the land
All the land
The Won is black, teh Grube is white
They lie by day and then by night
The Won’s a hack, teh Grube’s a schmuck
Expect some truth?
Yer sh*t out of luck
And now, at last, it’s plain to see
teh liberal media on bended knee
Conspiracy
The Won black, the Grube is white
They lie by day dissemble by night
The Won is black, teh Grube is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A terrible blight
The Truth came out, despite their pleas
teh Grube’s a reflection of MIT
The Won’s an ass, teh Grube’s a putz
Together they need hard punch in the nuts
Swift kick to teh nuts
– Three Dog Night… Obama’s favorite band
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:12 pmIt’s very silly to deny Gruber had the inside line on methods and strategies and deceptions – he was well known to these people and touted on a regular basis as Mr. Fricking MIT Romneycare architect. He’s not lacked for any follow-up employment after his lucrative Ocare consulting adventures, either.
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:13 pmBurwell is the Greek lady who runs HHS. You mean King or Halbig. 75% of bronze plans are wholly paid by subsidies according to the internet (which is not ever allowed to publish something which is not true). I don’t know how much of the market is through federal exchanges. If enough, and the subsidies are ruled illegal, it will be an unholy fustercluck. Maybe even back to the drawing board.
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:15 pmNone of us are really surprised by this, just pleasantly surprised at the wealth of documentation readily available.
Had the web been activated 10 years earlier, we might have had this for Obama and Ayers and history would have been changed.
It will still be interesting to see how much traction this gets into the general public consciousness.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:19 pmWhat will Bill Mahr, Jon Stewart, and others do with this being lied to stuff? Will they cover for the one, or get indignant for being had?
The only way to avoid the various intrusions into your privacy levied by Obamacare is to go all cash and pay the fine.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-03/hospitals-are-mining-patients-credit-card-data-to-predict-who-will-get-sick
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/hospitals-soon-see-donuts-to-cigarette-charges-for-health.html
Consider that line obliterated.
Steve57 (c4b0b3) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:24 pmI think that likely, SarahW. Remember: I said this before Halbig was even decided:
Will it be all the states? Probably not. A majority? Tough to say. Will Big Media talk 24/7 about how horrible the GOP is for not insisting states establish exchanges? Will a goodly number of states cave? Will Big Media ask every GOP presidential candidate if they believe states should establish exchanges? Will many of those candidates cave? Will Big Media try to make this issue far and away the biggest issue of the presidential campaign? Will Obama look to find ways to circumvent the states and declare exchanges state-established? I find all of these possibilities extraordinarily likely (some more than others).
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:25 pmAnother point that people will make (as if they were the first to notice it) after the USSC reverses in King, which I said before Halbig was decided: some very low-income people will actually benefit from the ruling, insofar as they will not be required to buy health insurance that they don’t want.
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:28 pm$400k is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions in speaker fees Gruber has received. These evil leftwing elites gin up a highly complex healthcare law, which will of course require a massive bureaucracy to administer and then take up their positions around the feeding trough
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:28 pmSo the real question is: a) how many people fall into that 8%, b) how many are deprived of subsidies who want them, c) what is the overlap between categories a and b, and d) what political muscle do the different groups have, vis-a-vis each other and the people who already have a vested interest in more states establishing (or not establishing) exchanges?
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:31 pmLooking at that quickly, SarahW, it is clear that there desire is to better coordinate your patient’s care. Unfortunately, that sounds reminiscent of “if you like your plan, you can keep it”.
I reads somewhere recently the idea that people often have a good reason for doing what they do, and a real reason for doing what they do.
I once heard from a person involved in making the HIPPA regs. (pardon me if you’ve heard this before). The whole purpose of the legislation had little to do with patient data security, it was much more to make clear what kind of information could be data mined without specific permission being obtained.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:34 pmUPDATE BY PATTERICO: Much more on this in my post here.
Because there are so many interesting, worthwhile blog entries at Patterico.com — a lot of them at the moment closely related to one another — it would help if they were linked together, or certainly if their message threads were interconnected. I hate seeing so many “OMG, ya gotta be kidding me!” blog entries ending up stranded or sort of competing with one another, with comment threads of only a few dozen or fewer posts.
As for anything pertaining to Obama, he truly is disreputable, corrupt and sleazy in a way that peoples in Third-World or banana-republic societies take for granted.
Welcome, Americans, you’re being introduced to the lingering, sour taste of backwards, cruddy, half-assed nations, courtesy of your president.
Mark (c160ec) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:35 pmObama has lied consistently about ACA and gotten away with most of it, at least the press won’t hold him to account.
He probably figures he can skate on Gruber the way they let him get away with calling terrorist Bill Ayers ‘just a guy in the neighborhood,’ years after Ayers had tapped him for the Annenberg Challenge [Fiasco], helped secure him the soft ‘con law lecturer’ position at Chicago Law, and held his very first fundraiser for political office in Ayers’ own living room. Why not?
Most of the old media still won’t cover Gruber anyway.
Estragon (ada867) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:51 pmMy COBRA is a lot more than 8% of my income and Obamacare will be even more. I wish the fine were the reason I have health insurance. The fine, as a motivator, was the biggest tell that this whole thing was a fraud and an extortion on the young, the healthy and the productive, to help pay for the old wrecks like me and the food stamp drones who vote for Obama. If Obamacare is so freaking popular, if so many people need and desire affordable health insurance, why would you need a freaking fine to make them buy it?
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:56 pm$400k may just be a drop in the bucket, but I believe it pushes the fraud into felony territory.
What is the statute of limitations on fraud, anyway?
Steve57 (c4b0b3) — 11/17/2014 @ 7:57 pmFederal fraud, five years generally, ten years if it affects a financial institution. Immigration, five years for some, none at all for the more serious ones (moo ah ha ha).
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:01 pmWhy do you think Goldman Sachs is such buddies with Obama? How long has it been since TARP?
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:04 pmthe Journolist is in full ‘squirrel’ mode,
narciso (ee1f88) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:08 pmOh, they say more than that…ACA blocks underwriting and leaves a few loopholes to manage risk. But ACA wants herd management.
What they re really working up to is criminal drug evasion. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Z2ag8FMZw
SarahW (267b14) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:24 pmEveryone,everywhere will default.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/11/chicagos-impending-pension-catastrophe.html
Princess is assured of a legacy.
DNF (3b2963) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:27 pmTwo sides of the same bad Penny.
askeptic (efcf22) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:41 pmOthers not on staff:
FLOTUS
Michael Wilbon
Tony Kornheiser
Harry Reid
Associated Press
Oprah Winfrey
Beyonce
Jay Z
John Roberts
You think he doesn’t pay verrry close attention to what these folks say to him?
Ed from SFV (3400a5) — 11/17/2014 @ 8:46 pmhanging is too quick… stake them out between two fire ant hills, coat them in cheap pancake syrup, make a trail of the same back to both, then disturb the hills with a long stick and then walk away.
redc1c4 (269d8e) — 11/17/2014 @ 9:05 pmIn Soviet America, your health damages you.
nk (dbc370) — 11/17/2014 @ 9:22 pmJUST A GUY….WITH A LISP….IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Do you think Obama ever KISSED Grooobie???
Gus (7cc192) — 11/17/2014 @ 9:59 pmhttp://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/11/18/darren-wilson-supporters-crowdfund-pantsupdontloot-ferguson-billboard/
DNF (3b2963) — 11/18/2014 @ 6:38 amThe 21st century has seen the most disgraceful performance by the mainstream press in all history. The crystal-clear bias of the majority of news reporters has never been more blatant.
When BHO chuckles “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,” reporters should shout back at him “You are a lying sack of sh!t, we know it, and we’re not letting you get away with it anymore!”
When Pelosi says “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill,” reporters should shout back at her “That is a demonstrable lie! We’re not stupid and we’re not covering for you any more! Tell the truth!”
That’s the _real_ story here. Not that Gruber is a slimy snake-oil salesman. Not that BHO and the Dems misled the public. Not that the ACA is a disaster. The real story is that the mainstream press has lost all credibility as a pursuer of truth. They hounded Nixon, they vilified W, and now they lick BHO’s @ss all the way downtown. It’s infuriating!
gp (5a38d9) — 11/18/2014 @ 8:21 am