How Jonathan Gruber—and Republicans using him—get Obamacare history all wrong

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday November 13, 2014 · 8:51 AM PST

2014/11/13 · 08:51

Economist Jonathan Gruber speaks at a conference of the Workers Compensation Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, March 12, 2014. Dr. Gruber is a professor at MIT and the architect of the healthcare reform laws in Massachusetts and the American Af

Republicans have more ammunition for their Obamacare repeal quest in the form of stupid and disparaging remarks made in 2013 by Jonathan Gruber, the guy who was instrumental in creating Romneycare in Massachusetts, and was a technical consultant to the White House on the Affordable Care Act. That's a key thing to keep in mind—Gruber is an economist and he had a bunch of models from developing Romneycare that he used to game out various funding scenarios on the federal law. He was a consultant who was doing number crunching, and while influential was not in on the messaging or the actual bill writing. To wit:

Pelosi on Gruber: "I don't know who he is. He didn't help write our bill."
— @WaPoSean

It's also worth keeping in mind that these renewed attacks are coming from Republicans who gave us "death panels" and "government takeover" and "illegals" getting health insurance and the $716 billion Medicare cuts, not to mention Sen. Mitch McConnell and his argument that Kentucky could keep Kynect after Obamacare is repealed "root and branch." These are not people who are bastions of truth on the healthcare law.

To the meat of it, here's what Gruber said—and has subsequently apologized for—that has conservatives so riled up right now.

The bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If [CBO] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it's written to do that. 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...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.

Extremely impolitic yes, but also not true as anyone who followed and wrote about the debate during the months the legislation was developing knows. ThinkProgress's Igor Volsky is among those people, and details how Gruber overstates his case. And this tweet from another healthcare writer makes a pretty good point, too.

I'm glad the Supreme Court didn't scoop Gruber on the mandate being a tax back in 2012.
— @onceuponA

To find out more about the tax/fine non-distinction, and more, head below the fold for that.

As Volsky points out—contra Gruber—whether lawmakers were calling it a tax or a fine made no difference to the Congressional Budget Office when they scored it "because the economic effect is the same whether it is called a tax or a penalty." They scored it as generating $4 billion in 2016, and would have done so no matter what it was called. It made no difference to the CBO. Gruber just gets that completely wrong, and Republican lawmakers who were involved from the beginning—especially Sen. Chuck Grassley who was courted by Democrat Max Baucus for months and months during the bill's development—know that.

Likewise, contra Gruber, discussion about healthy people would help pay for sick people was not some big secret Democrats were trying to keep Republicans in Congress and the American people from finding out. As Volsky points out, that was the subject of numerous media reports including this one from CBS News, talking about how younger people would help support older people and the whole concept of "community rating," not charging outrageously higher premiums to older or sicker people. Volsky adds that the "question was relentlessly discussed in health committees and the White House’s very public webpage about President Barack Obama’s own healthcare proposal states that he wants to 'limit premium variation based on age.'" And of course, this: "The idea […] was routinely used by Republican critics and lawmakers to slam Obama’s health care effort in 2009 and 2010. […]"

The favorite game of Republicans from the beginning of this process—besides of course out and out lying about the law—has been to complain about its complexity and how long it is, as if law-making wasn't their day jobs for which they are being very well-paid by the people who elected them. Gruber's comments from a year ago give more fodder to that and that's a problem. But what these comments don't do is negate the fact that millions of Americans have benefited greatly from this law, that lives have been saved. That's what Republicans need to answer to as they continue on their repeal quest.

How Jonathan Gruber—and Republicans using him—get Obamacare history all wrong

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