“Nobody much cared how much credit Jonathan Gruber took for Obamacare — until now.
Once videos surfaced in which the MIT economist talked about the public’s “stupidity,” his claims suddenly matter a lot.
Conservatives are using the controversy — not the first involving the high-profile health care expert and Obamacare comic book author — to show that Democrats knew the law was terrible all along.”
“Small-business enrollment on new insurance marketplaces set up under the president’s health-care law has fallen well short of the administration’s expectations, according to government report released Thursday.”
“By now you’re aware of the red hot ‘federal subsidies’ controversy, yes? The star of the show at the moment is one Jonathan Gruber — a famed economist and top Obamacare architect — who’s been caught repeatedly lying about the law he helped design, while smirking about the “stupidity” of the American people. Gruber’s performance has become so harmful to The Cause that Nancy Pelosi is now pretending she doesn’t know who he is:”
“The Supreme Court has granted cert. in King v. Burwell, one of four cases challenging the IRS’s ongoing expansion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s main taxing and spending provisions beyond the clear and unambiguous limits imposed by Congress. Here I will attempt to dispel common myths surrounding these “Obamacare” cases.”
“The Obama administration announced Monday that it expects to enroll 9.1 million people in the health insurance exchanges over the next 3 months. That is only 2 million more enrollees than the administration says enrolled this year, and a sharp drop from the 13 million who the Congressional Budget Office predicted would enroll in 2015. For once, the White House has decided not to over-promise what it can’t deliver in Obamacare.
There are good reasons for the administration to hedge its bets:”
“Liberals are in retreat this week as they recover not only from the historic defeat suffered by Democrats in last week’s midterms but also from the fallout from Jonathan Gruber’s confessions about the deceit at the heart of the effort to pass ObamaCare. The three videos that have surfaced in which Gruber strips away the veil of lies from the campaign to pass the misnamed Affordable Care Act is a major embarrassment for the administration. But while many on the right are treating this as a smoking gun that should doom President Obama’s health-care legislation to repeal, liberals are confident that this storm will pass and that the law will survive. But while they are right that nothing—not even a similar admission from the president himself—could wipe it away, they are wrong to think Gruber’s statements haven’t significantly altered the debate and may yet play a crucial role in its destruction.”
“When the Supreme Court takes up yet another challenge to the president’s health care law in March, the outcome could have a devastating impact on millions of Americans receiving subsidized health coverage through its exchanges. Almost immediately after the court announced it would hear King v. Burwell, the now-famous case that centers on whether people enrolled on the federal exchange can receive federal subsidies, legal experts began predicting grave news for Obamacare.”
“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:”