The Affordable Care Act II - Because Mr. Obama Loves You All

[IDBillzFan]

Completely embarrassing article here from Firedoglake breaking down how the WH specifically hired Gruber to do their dirty work, distribute his "MIT" quality articles and quotes to key publications, who pushed forward the news manufactured by the WH and Gruber to get its bill passed.

 

Twitter is blowing up on this, with #Gruber trending above all else, which is usually what happens before the rest of the news can no longer ignore this.

 

WH and Dems are now in full gatorman mode.

 

Gruber began negotiating a sole-source contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in February of 2009, for which he was ultimately paid $392,600. The contract called for Gruber to use his statistical model for evaluating alternatives “derived from the President’s health reform proposal.” It was not a research grant, but rather a consulting contract to advise the White House Office of Health Reform,headed by Obama’s health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle, to “develop proposals” for health care reform.

 

How did the feedback loop work? Well, take Gruber’s appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage for his testimony. On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Ezra published an excerpt.

 

White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber’s Senate testimony and Ezra Klein’s article on the White House blog. “We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day” he said, pointing to Gruber’s “objective analysis.” The “transparent” part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber’s contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody in the three-hit triangle bothered to disclose.

 

But that was child’s play compared to the effort that went into selling Gruber’s analysis of the bill unveiled by the Senate on Wednesday, November 18. Two days later on Friday November 20, Gruberpublished a paper entitled “Impacts of the Senate High Cost Insurance Excise Tax on Wages: Updated,” claiming that the excise tax would result in wage hikes of $234 billion from 2013 through 2019.

 

And it was off to the races.

 

The next day on the 21st, Ron Brownstein wrote in the Atlantic about Gruber’s effusive praise for the cost-cutting measures in the bill: “Everything is in here….I can’t think of anything I’d do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn’t have done better than they are doing,” says Gruber.

 

On Monday the 23rd, the DNC was sending the Brownstein column around in its entirety…one of 71 emails they would send touting Gruber’s work and it was included in OFA’s Monday Morning News Clips on BarackObama.com.

 

Edited November 14, 2014 by LABillzFan

[Nanker]

It's getting more and more like Putney Swope all the time.

I'm expecting the WH staff to get enraged and set fire to a big pile of money they find in the basement when they find out B O has stolen all the profits for himself and left them with nothing.

[B-Man]

The Gruber Confession

By Charles Krauthammer

 

FTA:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber. “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.” This was no open-mic gaffe. It was a clear, indeed enthusiastic, admission to an academic conference of the mendacity underlying Obamacare.

 

First, Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate — what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance — was not a tax.

 

Worse was the pretense that Obamacare wouldn’t cost anyone anything. On the contrary, it’s a win-win, insisted President Obama, promising that the “typical family” would save $2,500 on premiums every year.

 

Skeptics like me pointed out the obvious: You can’t subsidize 30 million uninsured without someone paying something. Indeed, Gruber admits, Obamacare was a huge transfer of wealth — which had to be hidden from the American people, because “if you had a law which . . . made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

 

Remember: The whole premise of Obamacare was that it would help the needy, but if you were not in need, if you liked what you had, you would be left alone. Which is why Obama kept repeating — PolitiFact counted 31 times — that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

 

But of course you couldn’t, as millions discovered when they were kicked off their plans last year. Millions more were further shocked when they discovered major hikes in their premiums and deductibles. It was their wealth that was being redistributed.

 

 

 

More at the link:

 

 

 

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[Azalin]

Completely embarrassing article here from Firedoglake breaking down how the WH specifically hired Gruber to do their dirty work, distribute his "MIT" quality articles and quotes to key publications, who pushed forward the news manufactured by the WH and Gruber to get its bill passed.

 

Twitter is blowing up on this, with #Gruber trending above all else, which is usually what happens before the rest of the news can no longer ignore this.

 

WH and Dems are now in full gatorman mode.

 

but so far, the network news outlets appear to be in full Sgt Schultz mode.

 

[/dev/null]

but so far, the network news outlets appear to be in full Sgt Schultz mode.

 

http://youtu.be/UmzsWxPLIOo

 

did you hear about Sarah Palin's family getting into a fight? OMFG, top of the news.

 

Important schit man. Keep it in perspective

[IDBillzFan]

Interesting article here that the King challenge may end up getting crushed not just by the conservative judges, but by Kagan as well.

 

In a case involving the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community) Justice Kagan’s own words provide the metaphorical rope with which to hang the ACA in King:

“’But this Court does not revise legislation . . . just because the text as written creates an apparent anomaly as to some subject it does not address. Truth be told, such anomalies often arise from statutes, if for no other reason than that Congress typically legislates by parts — addressing one thing without examining all others that might merit comparable treatment. Rejecting a similar argument that a statutory anomaly made ‘not a whit of sense,’ we explained in one recent case that ‘Congress wrote the statute it wrote’ – meaning, a statute going so far and no further. . .

This Court has no roving license, in even ordinary cases of statutory interpretation, to disregard clear language simply on the view that . . . Congress ‘must have intended’ something broader.”

 

Maybe gatorman can argue on behalf of the state: "Your honor, I know the law is specific, but what they wrote is clearly not what they meant because they were in a hurry and besides, context!"

[B-Man]

BYRON YORK: Dems’ path after Obamacare: Down, down, down.

There were 60 Democrats in the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009, when they voted in lockstep to pass the Affordable Care Act. Soon there will be 46 Democrats in the Senate, or perhaps 47, if Sen. Mary Landrieu manages to eke out a win in Louisiana. In plain numbers, the post-Obamacare trajectory has not been good for Senate Democrats.

 

The 46 or 47 Democrats in the next Senate are a bit different from the group that passed Obamacare. Sixteen of them took office after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. They never had to vote for it and have never had to defend voting for it.

 

Are those post-Obamacare Democrats as strongly opposed to changing the law as their colleagues who voted for it? Or are they possibly a little less personally invested in staving off challenges? It’s a question that will be tested in coming months

.

 

“After [the midterms], the conditions for repeal and replace may be even better than most people think,” writes a Senate Republican aide in an email exchange. “Not only is there a fresh crop of Republicans eager to make good on campaign pledges, but a significant number of Democrats have no particular attachment to the law and may even want to be rid of it as a political issue.”

 

Well, why should they stick their necks out to protect Obama’s legacy? He certainly won’t do anything to protect them.

 

 

 

[DC Tom]

Interesting article here that the King challenge may end up getting crushed not just by the conservative judges, but by Kagan as well.

 

 

 

Maybe gatorman can argue on behalf of the state: "Your honor, I know the law is specific, but what they wrote is clearly not what they meant because they were in a hurry and besides, context!"

 

There's an interesting statement in the original ruling itself, too, regarding the distinction between "penalty" and "tax"...

 

In answering that constitutional question, this Court follows a functional approach, "[d]isregarding the designation of the exaction, and viewing its substance and application."

 

Reference United States v. Constantine for the quote.

 

It's an interesting little blurb, since it could be applied to this case as "yeah, we designated the subsidy as applying to "state" exchanges, but in substance and application it's clearly meant to aid the purchase of insurance."

[/dev/null]

Reference United States v. Constantine for the quote.

The government sued Keanu Reeves?

[Nanker]

However, the fascists who designed and passed this abortion designed the lack of subsidies available in the Federal Exchange to incentivize the states to step up and do the heavy lifting of building their own exchanges. It was by dip-shi t Democrat design that subsides would be available only through the state exchanges. They never thought that any states would say, hey Feds... F U, it's YOUR farging law - YOU created an exchange, we'll pass on making our own - it's too complicated to do it right in such short a period of time. The Federal Exchange was meant as a fall-back in the law.

[PearlHowardman]

Where's gatorman hiding?

[B-Man]

Amazing.

 

Obama: We didn’t mislead on health care

Politico, by Josh Gerstein Original Article

 

BRISBANE, Australia — President Barack Obama denied Sunday that his signature health care reform law was deceptively marketed, rejecting statements by a consultant on the plan who said aspects of Obamacare were designed to take advantage of the “stupidity” of voters

 

Obama has the shocking audacity to say: "there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent"

 

I think that we owe Joe Wilson an apology

 

 

.

[Doc]

Amazing.

 

 

 

Obama has the shocking audacity to say: "there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent"

 

I think that we owe Joe Wilson an apology

I'm amazed that you're amazed by this. You expected Barry, for once, to tell the truth?

[DC Tom]

I'm amazed that you're amazed by this. You expected Barry, for once, to tell the truth?

 

The amazing thing is that he probably thinks he's telling the truth.

 

I don't think he's dishonest. I think he's delusional.

[TakeYouToTasker]

 

 

The amazing thing is that he probably thinks he's telling the truth.

 

I don't think he's dishonest. I think he's delusional.

I don't disagree with the delusional part, though it think it stems from a devout inability to admit fault, which makes him incapable of truthfulness. ****, it even makes him incapable of truthiness.

[IDBillzFan]

The amazing thing is that he probably thinks he's telling the truth.

 

I don't think he's dishonest. I think he's delusional.

 

I agree. It's become sort of a cliche, but he, Reid, Pelosi and especially Wasserman-Shultz are the American version of Baghdad Bob.

 

At least Gruber, for all the stupidity that comes with making these comments repeatedly and then trying to pass it off as a slip of the tongue, was being honest in his comments.

[B-Man]

Pat Sajak ✔ @patsajak Follow

 

Gruber has shined a light on the disdain many self-proclaimed champions of "the little people" have for those people.

 

1:40 PM - 16 Nov 2014

357 Retweets 272 favorites

 

 

 

Free and affordable health care just gets better and better.

 

In 2015 the government will be activating some new “incentives” embedded in the Affordable Care Act in an effort to get more people to sign up.

 

But, as is often the case when the government says one thing, they mean exactly the opposite. In this case, when they say incentive what they really mean is that you are going to be penalized if you fail to acquire government mandated health insurance.

Penalties for failing to secure a health-insurance plan will rise steeply next year, which could take a big bite out of some families’ pocketbooks.

 

“

The penalty is meant to incentivize people to get coverage

,” said senior analyst Laura Adams of InsuranceQuotes.com. “

This year, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock.

”

 

In 2014, Obamacare’s first year, individuals are facing a penalty of $95 per person, or 1 percent of their income, depending on which is higher. If an American failed to get coverage this year, that penalty will be taken out of their tax refund in early 2015, Adams noted.

 

While that might be painful to some uninsured Americans who are counting on their tax refunds in early 2015, the penalty for going uninsured next year is even harsher.

The financial penalty for skipping out on health coverage will more than triple to $325 per person in 2015, or 2 percent of income, depending on whichever is higher.

 

Children will be fined

at half the adult rate, or $162.50 for those under 18 years old.

 

Source:

CBS News

So, that’s your incentive.

 

 

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[B-Man]

GALLUP: support for ObamaCare hits a new low.

“Support for Obamacare continues to decline, with the law hitting a new low in approval, and a new high in disapproval, as the second enrollment period has opened for Americans, according to Gallup.”

 

 

 

 

 

BARACK OBAMA: I did not mislead America with that man, Jonathan Gruber.

 

 

 

 

BYRON YORK: GruberGate Shines Spotlight On ObamaCare Profiteers.

 

Remember when Nancy Pelosi declared that Obamacare was a jobs bill? “It’s about jobs,” Pelosi said in 2011, during a news conference to mark the first anniversary of passage of the Affordable Care Act. “Does it create jobs? Health insurance reform creates 4 million jobs.”

 

Like many other promises about Obamacare, that hasn’t worked out.

 

 

 

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[Azalin]

Where's gatorman hiding?

 

I think the Muslims got him.

[Keukasmallies]

Wasn't there some German guy in the mid-to-late 1930's who said something to the effect, If you're going to lie, make it a big lie...?