“A federal appeals court on Wednesday delayed plans to handle a challenge to the Obama administration’s health care law because the Supreme Court is stepping into a separate case covering the same legal ground.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided not to move forward with an Obamacare case that was to have been argued on Dec. 17. It will be held back until the Supreme Court rules on its case, probably in late June.”
“CNN has unearthed a new Jonathan Gruber video speaking undiplomatically about the White House’s approach to passage of the health care law in 2010. In this video, Gruber says bluntly what many observers noticed at the time: President Obama focused on how the Affordable Care Act would bring down the cost of health care, not on the moral imperative of extending health insurance to millions of low- and moderate-income Americans.
“Barack Obama’s not a stupid man, okay? 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 percent health insurance coverage and 10 percent 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.””
“As Bob Laszewski so aptly explained over the summer, there are reasons why the White House delayed the 2015 Obamacare enrollment period until after the midterm elections. CBS News summarizes several of the unhappy developments consumers will encounter in the coming days and weeks:”
“Lying liars.”
“How Many People Have Enrolled So Far in Obamacare’s Second Open Enrollment?
Undoubtedly I will hear that question many times in the coming weeks.
The answer is that this enrollment process is so screwed up we will have no earthly idea how many new people have enrolled and how many 2014 enrollees remained on the program until at least April 2015.”
“Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s remarks about the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” as factors necessary to passing Obamacare have spurred responses from across the political spectrum.
Former DNC chairman Howard Dean responded to Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski’s comment that Gruber’s statement “might be a problem.”
“The problem is not that he said it. The problem is that he thinks it,” said Dean about Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. “I’m serious. The core problem of the d— law is that it was put together by a bunch of elitists who don’t fundamentally understand the American people. That’s what the problem is.””
“How can you be certain the discovery of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s repeated praise for the deception which resulted in the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and his acknowledgement of the “stupidity” of the American people to whom he and his Democratic allies successfully lied, is a major development? The media’s response to this revelation.
The videos, none of which were uncovered by any major news organization but by a previously anonymous investment advisor who found them hiding in plain sight on YouTube, feature Gruber denigrating the public his law purports to help. Yet, this has hardly merited a mention on the major networks. No nightly newscast has played the footage, and CBS News This Morning was the first network newscast to feature Gruber’s comments at all – and only just today.”
“MIT economist Jonathan Gruber is in the news again with his comments about how the drafters of ObamaCare used Americans’ ignorance about the complexities of tax law to impose a new tax on high-cost health insurance.
In a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012, Gruber said: “…we just tax insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get into being the same thing. It’s a very clever basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.””
“Voters last week flatly rejected the Obama administration’s policies and created a new opportunity to improve American health care by electing a Republican Congress that is firmly committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare.
With a flawed website launch, failed state exchanges, burdensome mandates, mass cancellations of coverage and countless other broken promises paid for by Medicare cuts and a trillion dollar tax hike, it’s no wonder so few Democratic candidates campaigned on the merits of Obamacare.”
“A number of liberal pundits working off of White House talking points became heavily invested in the argument that the election was not about Obamacare. They seemed to believe if the election was about something else, Obamacare wouldn’t be repudiated or the GOP would lack a mandate to get rid of it. This was, to put it mildly, silly and desperate.
No matter how many GOP ads were cut, how much direct mail was distributed, or campaign Web sites were created pledging to eliminate Obamacare or attacking Democrats for supporting it, the election could not be a referendum on Obamacare, according to the left-wing blogosphere. But it was. Of all the president’s policies that were on the ballot, Obamacare was the most significant.”