Thursday, November 13, 2014

Taxpayers paid millions for the deceptions of the Obamacare architect

EDITORIAL: Jonathan Gruber’s payday - Washington Times

The MIT economist who is the brains behind Obamacare has made quite a stir with his admission that President Obama’s health care takeover was built on lies. Mr. Gruber says he was willing to say and do whatever it took to advance the scheme, and now it’s clear why. Obamacare made Mr. Gruber a multimillionaire, and at the expense of the taxpayers.

Video of Mr. Gruber’s remarks, delivered at a University of Pennsylvania health care conference last year, has surfaced in which he explained how the details of Obamacare were kept under wraps until the measure was rammed through the Democratic Congress with no opportunity for anyone to read the legislation. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Mr. Gruber said. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever. But basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."

Those “stupid” people have been extremely generous to Mr. Gruber. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2010 investigated the $297,600 that the Department of Health and Human Services paid Mr. Gruber to sing the praises of the health care scheme. Congress — or part of Congress — was concerned that this payoff violated a federal law against paid government propaganda, but the GAO said it wasn’t a violation because Mr. Gruber had written his propaganda on his own time. Officially, he was paid only to “analyze various health care reform proposals and identify cost and coverage implications.”

◼ But wait, there's more: Obamacare Architect Brags Ted Kennedy “Ripped Off” Medicaid For $500 Million To Create Romneycare… - Weasel Zippers
Gruber is the gift that keeps on giving.
In several of Gruber’s lectures, which are available online, the MIT economist walks his audience through the process of how Obamacare came into being - Daily Caller

The story begins in Massachusetts where Gruber helped create the state’s universal health law, now known as Romneycare.

“We had a pretty powerful senator you may have heard of named Ted Kennedy,” Gruber said during an event at Simmons College in February. ”Ted Kennedy had managed to figure out a way to rip off the federal Medicaid program to the tune of about $500 million a year through a series of strange manipulations.