"Obamacare"

[Rage Against the McKee]

Hit myself in the head with a hammer, but there are some things I like about the Affordable Care Act, but itnneeds to be fixed.  Now we can get some sense built into by Republicans.

I bet they start by passing a repeal of Obamacare that they already know is just going to get vetoed.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

I bet they start by passing a repeal of Obamacare that they already know is just going to get vetoed.

Good. As long as it doesn't distract from the rest of the agenda, make the president continue to put his stamp on something the public broadly disfavors. Then start dismantling the more odious parts of the law.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Another embarassing display of honesty from Jonathon Gruber surfaces.

Recall that Mr. Gruber, along with Rahm's brother Zeke Emanuel, was the chief architects of Obamacare. In 2013, Gruber admitted that the law was intentionally drafted to be as confusing as possible, and to mislead the CBO. Gruber, like many of the hardcore leftists working in the background, is an acolyte of Saul Alinsky, for which the ends justify any means - lie, cheat, steal, but just win.

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.

obamacare-architect-lack-of-transparency-was-key-because-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-would-have-killed-obamacare

This is not the first time video has surfaced of Gruber making embarrasing, and potentially damaging admissions. This coming spring, at least 4 justices on the Supreme Court have decided to consider the case of King v Burwell, which challenges the legality of granting federal subsidies to people who buy insurance from exchanges set up by the federal government (in 23 red states that refused to set up their own exchanges). The law plainly states that the subsidies are only available to those who enrolled "through an Exchange established by the State" but the government now argues this was a typo and the subsidies are available to everyone.

Gruber didn't think it was a typo when he wrote it. He explained, on multiple occassions, that states who did not set up their own exchanges would not be eligible for subsidies, as a way to encourage (coerce) them into doing so. He now claims to have made a mistake. http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/07/25/mit-gruber-obamacare-architect-calls-his-statements-video-mistake/q1kkjC9zpQXLJuxhlY2HbJ/story.html

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Prof. Jonathan Adler best explains why the plaintiffs should succeed in King v. Burwell, and I would ordinarily agree but for Roberts' bizarre - almost smacking of blackmail - switcheroo in the last individual mandate case. As such, I'd say it's more a 50/50 proposition.

To recap the question at issue: Section 1311 of the ACA calls upon states to establish health insurance exchanges, and Section 1321 requires the federal government to establish exchanges in states which fail to do so (or fail to enact other mandated reforms).  Section 1401 provides for tax credits for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans in “exchanges established by the State under Section 1311.”  The challengers in this case argue this means what it says: that tax credits are only authorized in exchanges established by the states.  The government argues that the phrase “established by the State” does not mean that the exchange actually has to have been established by the state because other provisions establish some degree of equivalence between Section 1311 and Section 1321 exchanges and the plaintiffs’ interpretation would undermine the goal of expanding health insurance coverage.
 
Contrary to what many claim, this is not a case about a single phrase in a single, isolated provision in a gargantuan statute.  The law, read as a whole, with attention to each and every relevant provision, supports the plaintiffs’ case.  No one disputes that, as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote last Term in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA that “the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.”  But we must also remember, as Justice Scalia wrote in that same majority opinion, that agencies may not “rewrite[e] unambiguous statutory terms” nor “revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.”  Further, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the Court last Term in Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, courts have “no roving license, in even ordinary cases of statutory interpretation, to disregard clear language simply on the view that . . . Congress ‘must have intended’ something” other than what the statute’s text actually says.
 
The problem with the government’s position is that it requires pretending as if the repeated phrase “established by the State” has no real meaning – as if it is mere surplusage of no relevance to the actual meaning and effect of the law’s provisions — even though it was added in multiple places within Section 1401 at multiple times; even though “State” is defined as the fifty states and the District of Columbia; even though there is language drawing equivalency between territorial exchanges and state exchanges, but no such language for federal exchanges; even though the statute contains no reference to tax credits in federal exchanges, and so on.
 
The government and its defenders say that no portion of the ACA can be read to deny the availability of tax credits to low-income individuals, yet the ACA indisputably imposes an income floor for tax credit eligibility that means the poorest of the poor get no help from the law in purchasing insurance. They argue that it is implausible Congress would have conditioned an important benefit (tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies) on state cooperation, even though Congress does this all the time, has done this before with health insurance, expressly considered doing this in other draft health care reform measures, and did this within other portions of the ACA.  They claim Congress would not impose guaranteed issue and community rating without providing subsidies for the purchase of insurance, yet the ACA did that in the child-only market. They claim Congress would never have left achievement of the Act’s goal of expanding health coverage vulnerable to state intransigence, yet it did so with Medicaid, just as other cooperative federalism programs enacted by Congress are vulnerable to state intransigence. And so on again. Everything they say Congress would never do, it has done, often within the ACA itself.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/symposium-a-welcome-grant-for-a-straightforward-statutory-case-2/

[star seed 7]

Acolytes 

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Interesting story on the average dude who did the investigation nobody in the MSM cared to do, digging up Gruber's past statements about Obamacare. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-11/meet-the-mildmannered-investment-advisor-whos-humiliating-the-administration-over-obamacare

MSM's response: "Meh. Get back to us when it involves a Republican, especially Sarah Palin."

[star seed 7]

The msm actually said that? 

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/12/another-tape-surfaces-obamacare-architect-calling-american-people-stupid/

Obamacare architect Jonathon Gruber says the American people were too stupid to understand that a tax against insurance companies was really a tax against policyholders. He might be right about that - but people do overwhelmingly dislike Obamacare, so maybe they're not that stupid afterall.

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.

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

Always worth another look, especially now that we know he knew the truth. There is a difference between "too stupid to understand" and being lied to by someone you believed was honest.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/obama-mandate-is-not-a-tax/

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/11/12/howard_dean_obamacare_written_by_elitists_who_dont_fundamentally_understand_the_american_people.html

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/13/media-blackout-shields-obamacare-architect-who-bet-on-public-stupidity/

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.”

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Dr. Krauthammer weighs in on the Gruber Confessions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-gruber-confession/2014/11/13/474595bc-6b6b-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html

This October 2013 video shows MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, a principal architect of Obamacare, admitting that, in order to get it passed, the law was made deliberately obscure and deceptive. It constitutes the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.
 
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber. “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.” This was no open-mic gaffe. It was a clear, indeed enthusiastic, admission to an academic conference of the mendacity underlying Obamacare.

First, Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate — what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance — was not a tax.
 
Worse was the pretense that Obamacare wouldn’t cost anyone anything. On the contrary, it’s a win-win, insisted President Obama, promising that the “typical family” would save $2,500 on premiums every year.
 
Skeptics like me pointed out the obvious: You can’t subsidize 30 million uninsured without someone paying something. Indeed, Gruber admits, Obamacare was a huge transfer of wealth — which had to be hidden from the American people, because “if you had a law which .?.?. made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

Remember: The whole premise of Obamacare was that it would help the needy, but if you were not in need, if you liked what you had, you would be left alone. Which is why Obama kept repeating — PolitiFact counted 31 times — that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
 
But of course you couldn’t, as millions discovered when they were kicked off their plans last year. Millions more were further shocked when they discovered major hikes in their premiums and deductibles. It was their wealth that was being redistributed.

As NBC News and others reported last year, the administration knew this all along. But White House political hands overrode those wary about the president’s phony promise. In fact, Obama knew the falsity of his claim as far back as February 2010, when, at a meeting with congressional leaders, he agreed that millions would lose their plans.
 
Now, it’s not unconstitutional to lie. Nor are laws enacted by means of deliberate deception thereby rendered invalid. But it is helpful for citizens to know the cynicism with which the massive federalization of their health care was crafted.
 
It gets even worse, thanks again to Gruber. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case claiming that the administration is violating its own health-care law, which clearly specifies that subsidies can be given only to insurance purchased on “exchanges established by the state.” Just 13 states have set up such exchanges. Yet the administration is giving tax credits to plans bought on the federal exchange — serving 37 states — despite what the law says.

If the plaintiffs prevail, the subsidy system collapses and, with it, Obamacare itself. Which is why the administration is frantically arguing that “exchanges established by the state” is merely sloppy drafting, a kind of legislative typo. And that the intent all along was to subsidize all plans on all exchanges.
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Re-enter Professor Gruber. On a separate video in a different speech, he explains what Obamacare intended: “If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.” The legislative idea was to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by otherwise denying their citizens subsidies.

 This may have been a stupid idea, but it was no slip. And it’s the law, as written, as enacted and as intended. It can be changed by Congress only, not by the executive. Which is precisely what the plaintiffs are saying. Q.E.D.

It’s refreshing that “the most transparent administration in history,” as this administration fancies itself, should finally display candor about its signature act of social change. Inadvertently, of course. But now we know what lay behind Obama’s smooth reassurances — the arrogance of an academic liberalism, so perfectly embodied in the Gruber Confession, that rules in the name of a citizenry it mocks, disdains and deliberately, contemptuously deceives.

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

It's fitting that liberal arrogance exposes the president and this crap bill.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

It's fitting that liberal arrogance exposes the president and this crap bill.

The honesty is actually pretty refreshing, but it's also kind of a middle finger to the American people.

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Another Gruber video emerges, this time explaining how Obama oversold the issue of Obamacare "controlling costs" because that's what most Americans actually care about, as opposed to expanding insurance coverage to the unisured.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/politics/tapper-gruber/

Washington (CNN) -- As Congress voted on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2010, one of the bill's architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, told a college audience that those pushing the legislation pitched it as a bill that would control spiraling health care costs even though most of the bill was focused on something else and there was no guarantee the bill would actually bend the cost curve.
 
In recent days, the past comments of Gruber -- who in this 2010 speech notes that he "helped write the federal bill" and "was a paid consultant to the Obama administration to help develop the technical details as well" -- have been given renewed attention. In previously posted but recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an "exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter," taking advantage of voters' "stupidity" to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.
 
In this fourth video, Gruber's language is not as stark as in three previous instances, but his suggestion that Obamacare proponents engaged in less-than-honest salesmanship remains.
 
"Barack Obama's not a stupid man, okay?" Gruber said in his remarks at the College of the Holy Cross on March 11, 2010. "He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn't actually care that much about the uninsured. In fact a lot of the uninsured don’t care about the uninsured. They think they’re young and healthy and don’t need insurance. What the American public cares about is costs. And that's why even though the bill that they made is 90% health insurance coverage and 10% about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control. How it's going to lower the cost of health care, that's all they talk about. Why? Because that's what people want to hear about because a majority of American care about health care costs."

If you dig far enough back into this thread, I made this very same point about how this law was being sold on cost control because that's what people actually care about, but the only real prupose of the law was to redistribute wealth. Thank you, Mr. Gruber, for having the arrogance to actually tell the truth about how this bill was sold on a pack of lies.

Ah, here we go...

Yes, many people who already had insurance will be get shittier insurance, and we'll all get shittier healthcare to an extent as a result of crowding another 15-30 million people into doctor's offices and further cutting reimbursement rates, but the purpose of the ACA was never to help the majority of Americans. The purpose of the ACA, like so many liberal-socialist programs, is to redistribute the wealth. "Social justice" and all that.

But ObamaCare was never about ... reducing premiums. It was just another massive handout, this time to people with income up to 400% of the poverty line. Remember, we already had Medicaid - this was essentially just a massive expansion of Medicaid. And it is what Democrats do: they spend tax dollars to buy votes and perpetuate their power. They are parasites.

[star seed 7]

Literally everyone already knew this.

[Spracne]

I recently purchased a plan through the Marketplace (10/1).  Just got my notice that my 2015 premiums are increasing by 23%   OBAMA!!! 

[Jabeez]

My premiums went down 5 bucks!

[K-S-U-Wildcats!]

Literally everyone already knew this.

"Literally everyone." I'll posite that most conservatives knew Obama was lying and were pissed about it, at least some libtards knew Obama was lying and were just fine with it ('cause Alinsky and all), and then there were a lot of libtards and other gullible fools who actually paid any attention but swallowed the lie hook, line, and sinker.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

This is abusive and outrageous.

[Spracne]

I mean seriously, is $225/month for a male in his mid-twenties for a high deductible plan normal?

[michigancat]

just make it single payer already, jeez

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

I'm amazed at the lack of outrage that the president lied, not only to congress and the senate, but directly to the people to get the largest tax increase in US history. Bizarre. Network news hasn't even reported it as of today, which isn't unexpected to most people.

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

I mean seriously, is $225/month for a male in his mid-twenties for a high deductible plan normal?

It is now, but before you could get a catastrophic coverage plan for around $50.

[Rage Against the McKee]

I mean seriously, is $225/month for a male in his mid-twenties for a high deductible plan normal?

Yeah, pretty much. My insurance is paid by my employer. It covers my wife and me for about $1200 per month. It is low deductible and pretty good all around, though. I think it was around $400 before I married.