Jonathon Gruber, the MIT economist who was instrumental in crafting Obamacare and then was caught on video boasting how its implementation was based on lies, is at it again. Gruber was on Fox News Sunday debating Obamacare and the effort to Repeal and Replace the law with Karl Rove. He blamed the fact that the health care system that the affordable care act set up is collapsing on President Donald trump. The claim was made all the more brazen considering that the law was passed and implemented under President Barack Obama. It started its death spiral under the former president as well, with skyrocketing premiums and deductibles and insurance companies fleeing the exchanges.
Gruber’s claim that everything was fine in the Obamacare system before Trump became president is absurd on its face.
Gruber seems to be following the “big lie” strategy that many Democrats had followed when they claimed that thousands, perhaps millions of people will die if any Republican repeal and replace measure passes and is signed into law. The left is also arguing that the Republicans have, using a phrase from the 1930s, stabbed Obamacare in the back. The idea is that if it were not for those rascally Republicans, the Affordable Care Act would be working like a Swiss Watch and that premiums would be declining as promised and everyone would be covered for their health care needs.
Gruber was famously caught on tape declaring that the passage and implementation of the Obamacare law depended on the “stupidity” of the American people.
He seems to be still relying on that same alleged stupidity in the effort to try to derail GOP attempts to repeal and replace the law.
Meanwhile, the Senate, in its slow and deliberate way, has started its own repeal and replace bill. When and if the bill is passed it will have to be reconciled with the House bill, then the combined bill had to be passed by both houses of Congress and then signed into low.
The task has been assigned to a group of 13 Republican senators. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California decided to play both racial and gender politics by calling the group “13 white men.” The statement was not entirely true since it includes Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a Hispanic.
Most political observers believe that the repeal and replace of Obamacare process is going to take the rest of the year.
That lengthy period is said to be necessary to get things right. It will also give Democrats plenty of time to work mischief and attempt to dominate the messaging on the issue of reforming health care reform.
