Tag Archive for: Jonathan Gruber

The Left Will Always Blame the GOP on Obamacare

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With the 2016 elections right around the corner, conservatives must begin immediately preparing to rebut the massive Democratic Party/mainstream media, symbiotic messaging operation. I read a piece this week by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that summarizes the far Left’s new Obamacare messaging strategy in the event of a Supreme Court loss in the King v. Burwell (Obamacare subsidies) case.

Here is a short summary of where we are. The far Left is terrified that the Supreme Court is going to rule against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, essentially voiding the Obamacare subsidies in the states using the federal exchange even though the legislative language in the law regarding the “subsidies” was written this way to punish states for failing to set up state exchanges. The far Left and the Obama administration are disputing this point despite clear, videotaped evidence of Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of Obamacare’s lead architects, stating otherwise.

Now, the Obama administration has never let videotaped evidence of their prior contradicting statements dissuade them from continuing to lie to the American people (i.e. “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.”) but, in this case, their lies are especially egregious because their plan to withhold subsidies from states that refused to set up a state exchange was designed to punish the citizens of that state for not complying with Obamacare. When the punishment backfired because of public opposition to Obamacare, and support for the governors and legislators who refused to comply with its exchange language only increased, they went with plan B: lie. As usual, after their strategic miscalculation they are desperately trying to find a way to blame Republicans for this disaster, although not one Republican in the House or Senate voted for the final version of Obamacare.

The far Left’s messaging strategy to avert political disaster because of their tactical miscalculation regarding the Obamacare subsidies is to say that the Republicans have “taken away” the subsidies and pin the blame on Republicans if the court rules against the Obama administration. But, here’s the catch; the Dems destroyed our already-troubled healthcare system all by themselves by unilaterally supporting Obamacare. The reason the Obamacare “subsidies” (which are your tax payer dollars given back to you after the government takes a cut) are necessary is because insurance costs are exploding because Obamacare forces Americans to buy expensive insurance they do not want and do not need. And the reason these “subsidies” may be taken away is because the Democrats unilaterally wrote and passed the law this way to punish Americans for resisting this legislative debacle.

Unsurprisingly, when you combine the mandate to purchase health insurance policies, which included multiple unwanted and unneeded services with the community rating and guaranteed issue provisions designed to redistribute costs according to government edicts, you have a recipe for explosive healthcare cost growth. Of course, none of this was a mystery to the Republican Party when they warned America about the coming storm of healthcare premium hikes, a warning the mainstream media largely downplayed to ensure the “wizard” stayed well-hidden behind the curtain.

So here it is in a nutshell: Obamacare was shoved down your throats using parliamentary trickery. Obamacare forced you to buy expensive insurance you don’t want or need at dramatically inflated costs to compensate for the redistributive, big-government, effort to price-control the health insurance market. Obamacare taxed you to gather a honey pot of money. Obamacare then used this honey pot of taxpayer money to “give back” to Americans to pay for their new, and more expensive insurance.

You will never fix this legislative disaster by doubling down on absurdity. The economics won’t work because they can’t work. The Republican Party must prepare their counter message right now to explain to the American people the horrible tsunami that Obamacare has created. If we allow the far Left to continue to distort markets, engage in massive income redistribution operations, and instill more big-government coercion schemes to force compliance on the American people by simply pledging to prolong the misery by “fixing” the subsidy system and continuing the misery, then we are no better than the president who lied to us to sell us this jalopy.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. The feature image of the Supreme Court building is by Tom Williams | AP Photo.

Harry loves Gruber — Watch Reid lauding Gruber as the greatest economist and other lies about Obamacare

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Not one of the trifecta publicly seen as the political leaders of the Democrat Party; Reid, Pelosi, and Obama never knew who Gruber was. The incredible, consistent, sociopathic lying by these three would be horribly appalling if it were not so damn serious. The sociopathic lying by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, if not called-on and checked by someone who has the platform by which to do so, will collapse this nation.

The American People shouted loudly a couple of weeks ago: “STOP!” The American People overwhelmingly shouted: “SAVE OUR COUNTRY!” The American People shouted at the polling booths: “STOP the transformation of our country; STOP the Marxism dressed-up in all sorts of rags to make it look appealing!” The American People gave the Republican Party grand permission to STOP Reid, Pelosi, and Obama and call them on all their lies!”

Reid, Pelosi, and Obama are racing all over the place telling anyone who will listen, “I (We) didn’t know Gruber, or “he was not on staff” or other lies, lies, lies! STOP IT!! Someone needs to wash their mouths out with soap!! Sociopathic liars all. Just look at the youtube site below where…you guessed it, Reid is praising Gruber all over the place. Obama doesn’t know him, but he was in private meetings in the Oval with Obama. Gruber made close to $6-million dollars being paid to be this all-knowing, all-wise, political and economic consultant, as well as health-care expert. ENOUGH! Enough lies and other sociopathic behaviors. ENOUGH!

Harry Reid is all over the place claiming he doesn’t know Gruber. Well, heck, Harry…just watch the YouTube video below and listen to your own bellicose praising of the guy. By-the-way Harry, the date of your admiration speech was December 1, 2009, I believe it was a Tuesday.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Inside the Comic Book Jonathan Gruber Wrote to Sell Obamacare to America

Obama Just Stepped In A Pile Of Gruber (+video)

Jonathan Gruber’s Big, Benevolent Fraud by D.W. MacKenzie

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Obamacare, the noble lie, and cognitive dissonance at MIT.

It seems that critics of the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA ) have a new ally in our efforts to expose the deficiencies of the legislation: Jonathan Gruber.

This development comes as a surprise, because Gruber was the ACA’s primary architect. He has made public remarks that expose problems with the ACA’s adoption and future operation. However, Gruber still supports the ACA and labors under the idea that it can be fixed.

Gruber admits that the ACA is a kind of fraud — that is, it was deliberately written in a misleading way. The ACA was presented as a way to increase the affordability and accessibility of health care. In reality, the ACA is a transfer scheme.

If the ACA benefits Americans, why did it need to be misrepresented? According to Gruber, transparent spending and transparent taxing are impossible: “You just can’t do it.… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.… Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter.”

The ACA was written to hide the fact that it is designed as a transfer from healthier, younger people to less healthy, typically older people.

Why is a lack of transparency severely problematic? Because bureaucrats and politicians are supposed to serve the public in modern social-democratic welfare states. But why would we expect bureaucrats and politicians to actually serve the public?

Some scholars have suggested that competition in democratic elections can push politicians to serve the public, and elected politicians will therefore keep a watchful eye on bureaucrats. This is called the “median voter theorem.”

The problem is that political competition fails to discipline people in the public sector when governance is opaque. A well-informed electorate is a necessary condition for effective political competition.

Gruber is probably correct in saying that passing the ACA required misinforming the electorate. However, the opaque governance that Gruber lauds opens the door for large-scale waste and abuse by special interests. Opaque governance and a misinformed, or uniformed, electorate make it virtually certain that the ACA will be administered inefficiently, whatever one thinks of its merits.

Indeed, a lack of information causes adverse selection problems whereby the most corrupt people make the greatest efforts to rise in politics and within bureaucracies. Opaque governance thus guarantees abuse of the ACA by public officials and special interests.

What makes Gruber’s remarks particularly worthy of criticism is that he is employed as an economist — and at a top university. Worse still, he teaches public finance and policy at MIT: he really should understand the importance of transparency. And he does. Gruber is the author of Public Finance and Public Policy, chapter nine of which covers the median voter theorem. So, Gruber does understand the necessity of political openness and an informed electorate for efficiency in the public sector. Efficiency requires more than an informed electorate, but it is a necessary condition.

Anyone who understands even the basics of the median voter theorem knows full well that transparency is strictly required for efficiency. Anyone who simultaneously believes that transparency and opaqueness are both necessary for good public policy has cognitive dissonance. Jonathan Gruber has unwittingly helped reveal the incoherence of the case for the ACA.

Gruber is an economist who fancied himself able to reengineer dynamic markets through social policy. His conceit as a social engineer is matched by his disrespect for the American electorate. He thought that an opaque political process and obscure legal language could keep people in the dark. On top of that, Gruber fathered lies because he knew voters would reject the ACA if they were aware of the wrenching changes the legislation would bring. As his lies became obvious, he blamed poor legal phrasing for the federal government’s inability to hide the costly consequences of his transfer scheme behind the subsidies in the federal exchange.

It’s the conceit of the “nudger” — the classic case of an elite policymaker who thinks he is smart enough to design what’s best for you, even if you’re too stupid to understand why and too ignorant to check up on him.

Didn’t Gruber realize such monumental legislation would be under tremendous scrutiny? Didn’t he realize the painful economic effects would be felt by real voters with common sense? And didn’t he realize that it would only take pulling back one of the curtains to expose the totality of this Wizard-of-Oz-like scheme?

Fortunately, it has gotten much easier for people to become informed about the real facts concerning the ACA, as well as other social programs. Citizens will never be well-informed about all of the backroom politics and the internal operations of bureaucracies. But we can at least learn about their true nature in the abstract — and with regard to the ACA in particular.

Perhaps most importantly, we can be on the lookout for those claiming to be wizards in Washington.

20141117_mackenziethumbABOUT D.W. MACKENZIE

D. W. MacKenzie is an assistant professor of economics at Carroll College in Helena, Montana.