http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/politics/tapper-gruber/Obamacare architect discussed misleading public in 4th newly uncovered video
By JakeTapper, Chief Washington Correspondent
updated 2:01 PM EST, Thu November 13, 2014
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....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."
Gruber said the measures in the bill that attempt to lower costs constitute a "spaghetti approach" -- throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. And while preferable to the status quo, Gruber said he could offer no guarantee that any of the measures would work.
continued with video...
