Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 21, 2015 23:23:52 GMT -6
Many now think that, despite the denials by the Obama Administration, economist Jonatha Gruber was speaking the truth about Obamacare.
from Forbes
www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/06/21/contrary-to-white-house-denials-emails-show-jonathan-gruber-was-integral-to-obamacare/?utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix
Contrary To White House Denials,
Emails Show Jonathan Gruber Was 'Integral' To Obamacare
Sun, June 21, 2015
by Avik Roy
"Last fall, videos emerged showing MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare—mocking “the stupidity of the American voter” for not perceiving the ways in which the controversial health law concealed its true costs. At the time, President Obama and others went through great lengths to deny Gruber’s centrality to Obamacare. But 20,000 pages of new emails, obtained from MIT by the House Oversight Committee, appear to prove Gruber’s critical role. And Gruber’s role may help decide the King v. Burwell case that is now before the Supreme Court, the one that will shape Obamacare’s implementation for years to come.
Gruber, the ‘independent expert’
In October 2009, as the debate over Obamacare crested in Congress, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a prescient analysis projecting that, under Obamacare, health insurance premiums would increase by 47% in 2016 for people who bought coverage on their own: the “individual” or “non-group” market in health insurance parlance.
If anything, PwC understated Obamacare’s impact on individual-market premiums. But it did undermine President Obama’s wild claim that Obamacare would “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.” Democrats understood how much the report threatened the passage of Obamacare, and rolled out Jonathan Gruber—an “independent expert”—to assure senators that the “Affordable Care Act” would live up to its name.
Gruber scored an interview with Ezra Klein, then blogging at the Washington Post, in which Gruber said that “what we know for sure the bill will do is that it will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” (Emphasis added.) Gruber’s comments were trumpeted by Obamacare’s advocates as proof that the PwC report was “deceptive.”....
Gruber was no independent expert. The Obama administration paid him nearly $400,000 as a consultant on Obamacare’s design, especially its new layer of federal health insurance regulation. But Gruber tried to avoid disclosing this conflict in his public commentary and appearances. Democratic officials did as well, in order to maintain the pose that Gruber’s opinions were non-partisan. Indeed, when Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) specifically asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a list of all its paid consultants, Gruber’s name was mysteriously omitted.
The emails obtained from MIT show that on January 8, 2010, Gruber emailed Jeanne Lambrew—the White House’s most important internal employee on Obamacare issues—for advice on how to handle an inquiry from Politico about his lucrative contract. Gruber kept Lambrew and her colleagues apprised of his discussions with Ezra Klein, and Lambrew praised Gruber for “being an integral part” of Obamacare’s development.
Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of the new email trove.
Gruber sided with challengers in the King v. Burwell Supreme Court case
Why all this fuss as to whether or not Gruber was central to Obamacare? For some, it’s Gruber’s comments about the “stupidity of the American voter.” Arguably more important is the fact that Rich Weinstein, the man who scoured the Gruber videos, found footage of Gruber observing that the Affordable Care Act does not allow insurance subsidies to flow through Obamacare’s federal insurance exchange.
This is precisely the position taken by challengers to the Obama administration in the King v. Burwell case that the Supreme Court will decide in a matter of days. Democratic partisans—including Gruber himself—tried to dismiss the challenge as intellectually bankrupt, before the Weinstein videos surfaced.
Said Gruber: “What’s important to remember politically about [Obamacare] is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.”
It’s no coincidence that President Obama, when asked about Gruber’s off-script remarks, described Gruber as “some adviser who never worked on our staff [and] expressed an opinion I completely disagree with.”
The fact is that the wording of the Affordable Care Act is clear, and has been since the beginning. The law authorizes taxpayer-funded “premium assistance” only for individuals enrolled “through an Exchange established by the State under [Section] 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” (As I explained in 2011, Section 1311 is the portion of the law devoted to state-based exchanges, whereas Section 1321 discusses federally-run exchanges.)
Yes, Gruber was the key figure in Obamacare’s design
It was obvious before the recent controversies that Jonathan Gruber was the architect of Obamacare. It was a word used by countless reporters to describe Gruber during the consideration and passage of the law—and, often, by Gruber himself. That’s why it matters that Gruber thought the American voter “stupid,” and that Gruber understood that the law did not authorize subsidies through a federal insurance exchange.
We will find out soon if the Supreme Court agrees.
* * *
FOLLOW @avik on Twitter, Google+, and YouTube, and The Apothecary on Facebook. Or, sign up to receive a weekly e-mail digest of articles from The Apothecary.
INVESTORS’ NOTE: The biggest publicly-traded players in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges are Aetna (NYSE:AET), Humana (NYSE:HUM), Cigna (NYSE:CI), Molina (NYSE:MOH), Anthem (NYSE:ANTM), and Centene (NYSE:CNC)."
from Forbes
www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/06/21/contrary-to-white-house-denials-emails-show-jonathan-gruber-was-integral-to-obamacare/?utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix
Contrary To White House Denials,
Emails Show Jonathan Gruber Was 'Integral' To Obamacare
Sun, June 21, 2015
by Avik Roy
"Last fall, videos emerged showing MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare—mocking “the stupidity of the American voter” for not perceiving the ways in which the controversial health law concealed its true costs. At the time, President Obama and others went through great lengths to deny Gruber’s centrality to Obamacare. But 20,000 pages of new emails, obtained from MIT by the House Oversight Committee, appear to prove Gruber’s critical role. And Gruber’s role may help decide the King v. Burwell case that is now before the Supreme Court, the one that will shape Obamacare’s implementation for years to come.
Gruber, the ‘independent expert’
In October 2009, as the debate over Obamacare crested in Congress, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a prescient analysis projecting that, under Obamacare, health insurance premiums would increase by 47% in 2016 for people who bought coverage on their own: the “individual” or “non-group” market in health insurance parlance.
If anything, PwC understated Obamacare’s impact on individual-market premiums. But it did undermine President Obama’s wild claim that Obamacare would “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.” Democrats understood how much the report threatened the passage of Obamacare, and rolled out Jonathan Gruber—an “independent expert”—to assure senators that the “Affordable Care Act” would live up to its name.
Gruber scored an interview with Ezra Klein, then blogging at the Washington Post, in which Gruber said that “what we know for sure the bill will do is that it will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” (Emphasis added.) Gruber’s comments were trumpeted by Obamacare’s advocates as proof that the PwC report was “deceptive.”....
Gruber was no independent expert. The Obama administration paid him nearly $400,000 as a consultant on Obamacare’s design, especially its new layer of federal health insurance regulation. But Gruber tried to avoid disclosing this conflict in his public commentary and appearances. Democratic officials did as well, in order to maintain the pose that Gruber’s opinions were non-partisan. Indeed, when Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) specifically asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a list of all its paid consultants, Gruber’s name was mysteriously omitted.
The emails obtained from MIT show that on January 8, 2010, Gruber emailed Jeanne Lambrew—the White House’s most important internal employee on Obamacare issues—for advice on how to handle an inquiry from Politico about his lucrative contract. Gruber kept Lambrew and her colleagues apprised of his discussions with Ezra Klein, and Lambrew praised Gruber for “being an integral part” of Obamacare’s development.
Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of the new email trove.
Gruber sided with challengers in the King v. Burwell Supreme Court case
Why all this fuss as to whether or not Gruber was central to Obamacare? For some, it’s Gruber’s comments about the “stupidity of the American voter.” Arguably more important is the fact that Rich Weinstein, the man who scoured the Gruber videos, found footage of Gruber observing that the Affordable Care Act does not allow insurance subsidies to flow through Obamacare’s federal insurance exchange.
This is precisely the position taken by challengers to the Obama administration in the King v. Burwell case that the Supreme Court will decide in a matter of days. Democratic partisans—including Gruber himself—tried to dismiss the challenge as intellectually bankrupt, before the Weinstein videos surfaced.
Said Gruber: “What’s important to remember politically about [Obamacare] is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.”
It’s no coincidence that President Obama, when asked about Gruber’s off-script remarks, described Gruber as “some adviser who never worked on our staff [and] expressed an opinion I completely disagree with.”
The fact is that the wording of the Affordable Care Act is clear, and has been since the beginning. The law authorizes taxpayer-funded “premium assistance” only for individuals enrolled “through an Exchange established by the State under [Section] 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” (As I explained in 2011, Section 1311 is the portion of the law devoted to state-based exchanges, whereas Section 1321 discusses federally-run exchanges.)
Yes, Gruber was the key figure in Obamacare’s design
It was obvious before the recent controversies that Jonathan Gruber was the architect of Obamacare. It was a word used by countless reporters to describe Gruber during the consideration and passage of the law—and, often, by Gruber himself. That’s why it matters that Gruber thought the American voter “stupid,” and that Gruber understood that the law did not authorize subsidies through a federal insurance exchange.
We will find out soon if the Supreme Court agrees.
* * *
FOLLOW @avik on Twitter, Google+, and YouTube, and The Apothecary on Facebook. Or, sign up to receive a weekly e-mail digest of articles from The Apothecary.
INVESTORS’ NOTE: The biggest publicly-traded players in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges are Aetna (NYSE:AET), Humana (NYSE:HUM), Cigna (NYSE:CI), Molina (NYSE:MOH), Anthem (NYSE:ANTM), and Centene (NYSE:CNC)."