ACA Architect Blasted For ‘Deliberate Deception’

Nov. 11--An MIT professor considered one of the architects of Obamacare is being blasted by critics over a video they say shows him admitting the law's "lack of transparency" was designed to dupe a gullible American public.

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the explosive comments that have now gone viral on the Internet as a panelist during a lecture on "The Role of Economics in Shaping the ACA" at the University of Pennsylvania'sWharton School on Oct. 17, 2013.

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. ... So it's written to do that," Gruber said, suggesting "it would not have passed" if the law "made it explicit" that healthy people would "pay in" and the sick would get money.

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Gruber continued. "Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass. I wish ... we could make it all transparent. But I'd rather have this law than not."

Gruber, when reached by phone yesterday, said repeatedly, "I have no comment."

David Tuerck, head of the Beacon Hill Institute and chairman of Suffolk University's Economics Department, calls it "damning" that a "gleeful" Gruber "brags" about making the law's less palatable parts intentionally obscure to get them past the American public.

"What you see is breathtaking hubris on the part of Gruber," Tuerck said. "He has a cynical disregard for the opinions of the voter. He is happy to call the public gullible."

Gruber's remarks went viral in the conservative blogosphere after Phil Kerpen of American Commitment, a free market advocacy group, tweeted snippets of them after being sent a link to the lecture on Friday.

"I think it exposes there was a deliberate deception at the core of Obama-care ... for the purposes of deceiving the American public," Kerpen told the Herald.

Mark Pauly, a UPenn professor and co-panelist, said, "I thought it was a poor way of explaining what he was talking about -- political expediency and the idea of reducing the subsidy of employment-based health insurance. If you explicitly said that people would tax your health benefits, that would be political dynamite. It was not really about voters being stupid but about the political process."

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