Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber: Obama Was in the Room When the Cadillac Tax Was Created

In 2012, a couple of years after Obamacare’s passage and as President Obama is running for re-election, PBS aired a Frontline documentary on the healthcare law.

It was called The Choice, and it featured an extensive interview with Jonathan Gruber.

The interview details Gruber’s interactions with Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts before and during the passage of that state’s healthcare reform law, and Gruber’s meetings and interactions with President Obama later on.

According to Gruber, he first met Obama in 2006. The future president was still a senator, and asked Gruber to come to his office to give him a briefing on the Massachusetts reform. Obama called Gruber in because at that point it was common knowledge that Gruber had been the architect of Romney’s law. Obama wanted to hear from him about how a national healthcare law might work.

Gruber next meets Obama after he has become president.

The next time I see him is summer 2009. The big issue there is that he really wants to make sure I’m moving forward on cost control. I think that at this point he sort of knew we had a good plan on coverage, but he was worried on cost control. So we had a meeting in the Oval Office with several experts, including myself, on what can we do to get credible savings on cost control that the Congressional Budget Office would recognize and score as savings in this law.

And that was a meeting — it was very exciting, once again, because the economists in the room all said the number one thing you need to do is you need to take on the tax subsidy to employer-sponsored insurance. We need one minute of background on this. The way employer-sponsored insurance works is, if you get paid in wages, you get taxed. If you get paid in health insurance, you do not. …

So this tax subsidy economists have been railing against for decades, it’s super-expensive. We forego about $250 billion per year in tax revenues. It’s regressive — the richer you are, the bigger tax break you get. And it’s inefficient because it causes people to buy excessive health insurance. So everyone in the room said, “You want something that is real cost control that we know it will work, go after this.”

Now, the problem is, it’s a political nightmare, … and people say, “No, you can’t tax my benefits.” So what we did a lot in that room was talk about, well, how could we make this work? And Obama was like, “Well, you know” — I mean, he is really a realistic guy. He is like, “Look, I can’t just do this.” He said: “It is just not going to happen politically. The bill will not pass. How do we manage to get there through phases and other things?” And we talked about it. And he was just very interested in that topic.

Once again, that ultimately became the genesis of what is called the Cadillac tax in the health care bill, which I think is one of the most important and bravest parts of the health care law and doesn’t get nearly enough credit. I mean, this is the first time after years and years of urging — and the entire health policy, there was not one single health expert in America who is setting up a system from scratch, would have this employer subsidy in place. Not one.

So after years and years of us wanting to get rid of this, to finally go after it was just such a huge victory for health policy. And I’m just incredibly proud that he and the others who supported this law were willing to do it. …

Watch video of that segment of the interview on the next page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_e00NjQvFM

At that point, Gruber had already been working on the bill for months, building on the law that he had already gotten passed in Massachusetts.

Gruber praises Obama for ignoring the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and the anti-Obamacare message that that election sent.

Now you’ve got a problem. And this is where Obama showed his leader[ship]. I mean, this is I think one of the incredibly proud moments, which is at that point a lot of people said: “Well, good try. But you know what? Salvage the things people like, and cut and run, because the truth is, you just can’t get this done. Look at those town halls. It is so unpopular. You just can’t do it.”

And, you know, someone used to say to me, it’s sort of ironic that if you look at John F. Kennedy’s book called Profiles in Courage, they were all about times politicians didn’t listen to the public and did what was right, not what political expediency would say. And this was a profile in courage. I mean, he basically said: “You know, look, this is the right thing to do. We are going to do it. I’m going to fight for it.” …

Does that sound like someone who has a second thought about lying to the public — millions of “stupid” people, in his opinion?

(h/t Jim Hoft)

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