“Anyone who has listened to the Gruber tapes has heard Prof. Gruber’s repeated references to the “three-legged stool” that forms the core of Obamacare.[1] However, those who pay close attention to his remarks–variously characterized as “arrogant” (Charles Krauthammer), “ careless” (New York Times), “dumb” (Ezra Klein) “ ill-advised and indefensible” (Times Argus), “offensive” (New York Times), and “stupid” (David Axelrod)–may have detected that Gruber enthusiastically endorses (and Obamacare contains) a more sinister three-legged stool of deception regarding employer health plans.”
“Despite the enduring unpopularity of Obamacare, Congressional Democrats have up to now stood by their health care law, allowing that “it’s not perfect” but that they are proud of their votes to pass it. That all changed on Tuesday, when the Senate’s third-highest-ranking Democrat—New York’s Chuck Schumer—declared that “we took [the public’s] mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform…When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, ‘The Democrats aren’t paying enough attention to me.’””
“A rising number of Americans are claiming that Obamacare has negatively impacted their health insurance policies.
Only 14 percent claim they have been helped by Obamacare, while more than twice as many (35 percent) say they have been hurt by it, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll release Monday.”
“The most important effect of the revelations of the Administration’s flunkies’ history of cheesy lies about Obamacare is that liberals must now answer one threshold question before discussing the substance of any new socialist scheme:
Why should we trust anything liberals say about anything?”
“In March 1997, two congressmen proposed a welfare law so detailed that it had 77 sections. Within a month it sailed through the House by voice vote.
There was nothing unusual about swift passage for the Welfare Reform Technical Corrections Act of 1997. But in retrospect, it underscores the deteriorating conditions in Washington today, as the Supreme Court has accepted a case threatening the Affordable Care Act over the interpretation of a single ambiguous phrase.”
“House Republicans on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration alleging that the way in which the White House implemented its health-care law violates the Constitution.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. and drafted by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, escalates a brewing battle between GOP lawmakers and the Obama administration over separation of powers. Here’s a quick overview of its legal arguments.”
“I understand we’ve turned the page to the next controversy — Obama’s unconstitutional immigration pander — but I’d like to dwell a little longer on the previous travesty.
Obama administration health-care consultant Jonathan Gruber was discovered to have boasted that Obamacare was designed to exploit the “stupidity” of American voters and elude honest accounting by hiding both its cost and the taxes necessary to pay for it.”
“Once upon a time, it was gauche to accuse one’s ideological opposition of exploiting the rules by which the Congressional Budget Office plays the scoring game. It’s worth revisiting this idea in the wake of MIT academic Jonathan Gruber’s admission of guilt to this charge.
Way back in 2011, there were conservatives writing about how the CBO’s score of the Affordable Care Act rested on “budget gimmicks,” “smoke and mirrors,” and “a dismal track record.””
“Robert Pear of the New York Times recently described the “symbiotic” relationship between the Obama Administration and health insurers. It was not always so:
“But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.
“Insurers and the government have developed a symbiotic relationship, nurtured by tens of billions of dollars that flow from the federal Treasury to insurers each year,” said Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato CATO -1.93% Institute.”
““This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”
– MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, captured on videotape
What did Gruber mean when he uttered this words in a now-infamous video that has inflamed hostility to the Affordable Care Act?