- Feb 12, 2007
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A rare moment of honest in 2012 is coming back to haunt the Obamanoids:
ruber, as you probably know, was a paid technical advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and an informal advisor to Democrats in Congress. He was also an architect of the Massachusetts reforms, signed into law by then-Governor Mitt Romney, that served more or less as the Affordable Care Act's prototype. The comments from 2012 came during a question-and-answer session, following a lecture he gave at a non-profit research group based outside of Washington. Heres the key excerpt:
Questioner: You mentioned the health-information [sic] Exchanges for the states, and it is my understanding that if states dont provide them, then the federal government will provide them for the states.
Gruber: Yeah, so these health-insurance Exchanges, you can go on ma.healthconnector.org and see ours in Massachusetts, will be these new shopping places and theyll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. In the law, it says if the states dont provide them, the federal backstop will. The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop, I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think whats important to remember politically about this, is if youre a state and you dont set up an Exchange, that means your citizens dont get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So youre essentially saying to your citizens, youre going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope thats a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that theyll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this[/n]....
Jonathan Gruber on Halbig: Says Quote on Exchanges Was a Mistake | New Republic
Of course, now Gruber is disavowing his statement, but it's clear that the intent was to politically blackmail states into showing support for ObamaCare and setting up their own exchanges.
ruber, as you probably know, was a paid technical advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and an informal advisor to Democrats in Congress. He was also an architect of the Massachusetts reforms, signed into law by then-Governor Mitt Romney, that served more or less as the Affordable Care Act's prototype. The comments from 2012 came during a question-and-answer session, following a lecture he gave at a non-profit research group based outside of Washington. Heres the key excerpt:
Questioner: You mentioned the health-information [sic] Exchanges for the states, and it is my understanding that if states dont provide them, then the federal government will provide them for the states.
Gruber: Yeah, so these health-insurance Exchanges, you can go on ma.healthconnector.org and see ours in Massachusetts, will be these new shopping places and theyll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. In the law, it says if the states dont provide them, the federal backstop will. The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop, I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think whats important to remember politically about this, is if youre a state and you dont set up an Exchange, that means your citizens dont get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So youre essentially saying to your citizens, youre going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope thats a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that theyll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this[/n]....
Jonathan Gruber on Halbig: Says Quote on Exchanges Was a Mistake | New Republic
Of course, now Gruber is disavowing his statement, but it's clear that the intent was to politically blackmail states into showing support for ObamaCare and setting up their own exchanges.
