By Joseph Jang ‘18:
One of the main architects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) threatens the White House’s position in the upcoming Supreme Court case King v. Burwell. Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who engineered health care policy in Massachusetts, from which Obamacare was modeled after, remarked that the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” Arguing that the “stupidity of the American voter” was the main reason the individual mandate of Obamacare was held constitutional in Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sibelius in 2012, Gruber was met with a tsunami of outrage from the public. Gruber eventually apologized on national television; however, the damage his comment inflicted could not be mitigated.
The man behind such a dramatic reveal was investment adviser Rich Weinstein from Philadelphia. “I’m the guy who lives in his mom’s basement wearing a tinfoil hat,” Weinstein introduces himself in an interview with Bloomberg. His connection to Obamacare? He was among the first to receive notification from the government that his old policy did not meet Obamacare’s standards—and the replacement cost twice as much. So much for the “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” promise that Obama had made relentlessly (37 times to be exact).
Through Weinstein’s crusade to reveal the men behind the curtain, conservatives received the ammunition needed to start chiseling away at Obamacare. Now, with a Republican Congress, it will be harder for Obama to keep his policy the way he had planned it to be. In the incriminating video, Gruber describes the machination behind Obamacare, which suggests that states that did not create health subsidy exchanges risked giving up subsidies from the government. Conservatives now have the evidence they need to prove that the wording of Obamacare denied insurance subsidies to states that did not create their own health exchanges. The plaintiffs of the case argue that the law written does not allow the federal government to provide subsidies, and what’s more, it is now public that the writers wrote the law with full knowledge that it would not have been passed if legislators knew what it entailed.
In the legislative branch, the office of House Speaker John Boehner reiterated that he and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will make repealing Obamacare one of their top priorities. Although the complete repeal of the law is unlikely to occur, a “nobody” from Philadelphia has effectively torn the mysterious magical curtain of Washington D.C. and placed the inner workings of Obamacare under a microscope for all to see.
Sources:http://www.businessinsider.com/jonathan-gruber-comments-roil-obamacare-debate-2014-11http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/12/363537837/obamacare-architect-apologizes-for-remarks-on-the-laws-passagehttp://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/11/11/man-who-has-found-damning-gruber-vids-faults-medias-failure-uncover-themhttp://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care-keep/