Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber revealed that a lack of transparency was a crucial factor in helping get the Affordable Care Act passed, and that it was composed in a manner that took advantage of "the stupidity of the American voter," according to a recently uncovered video taken at an event in October 2013 and highlighted Sunday by the Daily Signal.
Even the individual mandate, which was only upheld by the Supreme Court because it was a tax, was actually not a tax, Gruber claimed during a panel that was secretly captured on video and posted on YouTube by the group American Commitment.
"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the Congressional Budget Score 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...," Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during Obamacare's design, stated.
Crafted in 2009, "the Affordable Care Act actually refers to two separate pieces of legislation - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152) - that, together expand Medicaid coverage to millions of low-income Americans and makes numerous improvements to both Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)," according to Medicaid.gov.
Given a choice between honestly informing the public or passing the bill, Gruber boldly stated that he'd rather have the bill, The Daily Caller reported.
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," he continued. "Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really critical to getting the thing to pass."
"Look, I wish we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather have this law than not," Gruber, who wrote a comic book style explanation of the law, added.
One of the most high profile defenders of the ACA, the 49-year-old has had his share of controversies regarding the law, where he has been caught admitting that some elements of Obamacare have intentionally been misleading.
While promoting the bill at one point, he accepted money from the government for his consulting work and failed to disclose that he was being paid. In another instance in January 2012, Gruber admitted that the public option was considered a way to move the country toward single-payer, something the Obama administration explicitly denied at the time, according to Breitbart.
Meanwhile, a recent survey by Medical Group Management Association showed that participation under the ACA exchange health plans is now being declined by over 214,000 American physicians since it will most likely force them to take on additional burdensome costs, according to CNSNews.com.
