Jonathan Gruber, the disgraced architect of Obamacare, appeared on CNN Wednesday to deny that his brainchild is unraveling amid reports of failing exchanges and sky-rocketing premiums. To the contrary, ObamaCare is working “as designed,” Gruber told CNN’s Carol Costello. “It’s a system which largely works,” Gruber said. “You now have 20 million Americans or more who are now getting insurance that they like.”
Gruber argued that the 22 percent increase only “applies to a very small fraction of people who have to buy insurance without the subsidies that are available.”
He added, “85 percent of people buying insurance on these exchanges get subsidies, and for those people this premium increase doesn’t affect them. Now for those remaining people, that is a problem and that’s something we need to address, but it’s not a crisis. It doesn’t mean the system’s collapsing.”
Hot Air’s John Sexton analyzed the professor’s claims and found them to be — shockingly enough — not terribly accurate.
He demonstrated a long time ago that he’s not an honest broker. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever but basically that was really critical to getting the thing to pass,” Gruber once said when defending the tortured way in which the law was written. Gruber applauds deception in the selling of Obamacare. [Watch all fourteen Gruber tapes here].
It’s true that 85% of people buying insurance “on the exchanges” are getting subsidies. However, as Gruber surely knows, as many as half the people buying Obamacare plans are not buying them on the exchanges. And none of those people buying off-exchange plans are getting any subsides at all. So the idea that the 22% increases only apply a “small fraction” is another attempt to deceive people about what is going on. Gruber knows the truth, he just doesn’t want viewers to know it.
As to how to “fix” Obamacare, Gruber said, “there’s no sense in which this has to be fixed. The law is working as designed.” He then added, “However, it could work better and I think probably the most important thing the experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty.”
In other words, the government needs to punish the poor slobs who say “no thanks” to the monstrosity. That will do the trick.
Gruber was actually uncharacteristically honest when he admitted that ObamaCare is working as designed. As most of us figured out a long time ago, the Affordable Care Act was designed to pave the way for a single-payer system.
Out on the campaign trail this week, Donald Trump offered a counterpoint of sorts to Gruber’s arguments.
“Jonathan Gruber said the American people are essentially stupid for approving and allowing ObamaCare to happen,” Trump told a crowd in Florida. “And you know what? We’ve got to show them on November 8 that we’re not stupid. We’re not stupid.”
https://youtu.be/HorPPXZDvQI
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