Barack Obama sold Obamacare to the public, the Congress, and the Congressional Budget Office with a pack of lies. The law would never work in a free market. It might never work at all. Common sense said that. Any smart person could figure that out. And now we know: Ivy League professors wrote it. An Ivy League graduate sold it. And they all knew it wouldn’t work. And still they boast about it!

A professor dishes on Obamacare

De facto President Obama, Vice-President Biden, and several senior advisers applaud when the House of Representatives takes up Obamacare and “deems it passed.” Photo: The White House

Meet Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On October 17, 2013, Prof. Gruber took part in a “plenary panel” talk at the Twenty-fourth Annual Health Economics Conference. (The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania, hosted the conference.) The panel talk lasted for nearly an hour. But three days ago, the advocacy group American Commitment published the most telling excerpt. In it, Gruber said:

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.

He further said, “I’d rather have the law than not.”

Today UPenn published the full panel discussion, after the scandal broke. (CNAV embeds both below. Seeing, and hearing, are believing.)

In short, Prof. Gruber admits: he lied. He now only admits it. He avows it. He called it good public policy. Anything to “have the law.”

What did he lie about?

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1. The penalty for not insuring, is a tax. (Then-candidate Barack Obama specifically objected to that kind of thing.)
2. The healthy must carry the load for the sick.

That’s why he wrote the law with a “minimum coverage mandate.” Without that, the healthy would not join such a risk pool. This would cause a “death spiral”: premiums rise, people drop out of the risk pool, and premiums rise the more.

The Daily Signal picked up on the American Commitment excerpt first. (The Signal also linked to this Heritage Foundation paper. It list all the broken promises of Obamacare, and suggests a different way at least to try to deliver on them.)

David Codrea, at examiner.com, commented further. He accused Gruber of pouring contempt on the de facto President’s own supporters. (Why does a specialist on gun-rights issues comment on Obamacare? Because, he says, those wanting to abrogate the Second Amendment play the same kind of con trick.)

Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com embedded several videos showing who else besides Gruber played this Big Con. They include Nancy Pelosi telling what she’s ready to do to “get this law passed for American families.” (Oh, puh-leeze.) And Obama saying “it’s not a tax.” And objecting to such a tax while on campaign in 2008. She also reminded us: the Democrats own Obamacare. Completely. Not a single Republican voted for it.

In fact, as activist Nick Purpura pointed out, Congress pulled a bait-and-switch to pretend Obamacare “originated in the House of Representatives.” In fact it came out of the Senate. Yet it is a tax. That makes it a “bill for raising revenue.” Such a bill “shall originate in the House.” This didn’t. That makes it unconstitutional on its face.

And of course the Supreme Court “granted cert” on whether the government can subsidize anyone it pleases. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano said to Neil Cavuto today: courts, especially the Supreme Court, hate vague bills. Jonathan Gruber admitted: he and others deliberately wrote a vague bill. It might fail on that ground alone.

The death spiral, in that event, will not be long in coming.

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