Health Economist Gruber: Important to Hide Obamacare's True Costs

Gruber said that “the stupidity of the American voter” made it important for him and Democrats to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. “That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” said Gruber. “But I’d rather have this law than not.” In other words, the ends—imposing Obamacare upon the public—justified the means.

The new Gruber comments come from a panel discussion that he joined on October 17, 2013 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

In fairness to Gruber, American voters are not the only people whose intelligence he questions; elsewhere in the discussion, he describes New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.) as someone who "as far as I can tell, doesn't understand economics" and calls a staffer for Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine)—presumably William Pewen—an "idiot."

Representatives of the Leonard Davis Institute tried to pull the video of Gruber's remarks, but they were too late. Phil Kerpen and others had already clipped them for public consumption.

Obamacare’s opacity was a deliberate strategy

Gruber made an argument that many of Obamacare’s critics have long made, including me. It’s that the law’s complex system of insurance regulation is a way of concealing from voters what Obamacare really is: a huge redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy. In the video, Gruber points out that if Democrats had been honest about these facts, and that the law’s individual mandate is in effect a major tax hike, Obamacare would never have passed Congress.

“Mark [Pauly] made a couple of comments that I do want to take issue with, one about transparency in financing and the other is about moving from community rating to risk-rated subsidies. You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing…and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

UPenn took down the video of Gruber saying deception was crucial to Obamacare's passage http://t.co/GZW3dQ8Wf9 pic.twitter.com/Wvy17VvtPX

To a large degree, the tactic of opacity worked. Not only did Obamacare get passed, but its complex system of cross-subsidies attracted less notice on the Right than did the law’s tax hikes and spending increases. But what progressives figured out—and conservatives are just learning—is that government regulation of health insurance can serve as yet another way to redistribute money from one group to another.

In Louisiana, Obamacare hiked rates for young men by 108%

If you look at the Manhattan Institute’s Obamacare cost map—in which we analyzed how the law’s health insurance regulations affect people of different ages and genders—you’ll see that for most of the country, young people who shop for coverage on their own have far steeper gross insurance costs under the law than they did before.

For example, in Louisiana—home to a hotly contested Senate race between incumbent Mary Landrieu (D.) and Rep. Bill Cassidy (R.)—the underlying cost of insurance increased by 108 percent for 27-year-old men, and 46 percent for 27-year-old women. 

In 2014, health economist Jonathan Gruber came under intense scrutiny for remarks he made suggesting that the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) relied on a lack of transparency that exploited "the stupidity of the American voter". The comments, captured on video from academic conferences in 2013 and earlier, sparked a major political controversy. 

Gruber's comments and explanation

Gruber, an MIT professor who had worked as a consultant for both state and federal governments on health care reform, was caught on video making several candid statements about the political strategy behind the ACA's passage. 

Key points from his statements:

• Lack of transparency as an advantage: In a 2013 video, Gruber said the ACA was written in a "tortured way" to avoid being scored as a tax by the Congressional Budget Office, which would have killed the bill. He said this "lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," adding, "call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever".
• Voters "too stupid" to understand: In another video, Gruber claimed a provision known as the "Cadillac tax" passed because American voters were "too stupid to understand the difference" between it being a tax on insurers and a tax on individuals.
• Political strategy vs. economic design: Gruber suggested that many of the law's design choices were driven by political considerations rather than economic best practices. He argued that plainly stating the financial redistribution from healthy to sick people would have prevented the bill from passing. 

https://x.com/J2dubyas/status/1947434642996670784

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/10/aca-architect-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-led-us-to-hide-obamacares-tax-hikes-and-subsidies-from-the-public/