Jonathan Gruber confirms Obamacare is ‘working as designed’ and calls for ‘larger mandate penalty’
On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” MIT Economics Professor and Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber argued that “The law is working as designed. However, it could work better. And I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that, we need a larger mandate penalty.”
Yes, just as the HHS describe the financial failings of Obamacare, the rising costs and depleting options, Gruber defends the law.
“Obamacare’s not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we’ve covered 20 million, the largest expansion in american history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurors could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare.”
Fixed?
photo Will O’Neill via Flickr
Gruber was asked about the 22% (which is projected to be around 25%) Obamacare premium increases, Gruber stated, “the 22% increase, let’s remember who that applies to. That applies to a very small fraction of people, who have to buy insurance without the subsidies that are available. 85% of people buying insurance on the exchanges get subsidies. And for those people, this premium increase doesn’t affect them. Now, for those remaining people, that is a problem, and that’s something that we need to address, but it’s not a crisis. It doesn’t mean the system’s collapsing. And most importantly, it doesn’t affect the 150 million Americans who get employer insurance, who have actually seen their premiums fall dramatically, relative to what was expected before Obamacare.”
“We have individuals who are essentially free-riding on the system, they’re essentially waiting until they get sick and then getting health insurance. The whole idea of this plan, which was pioneered in Massachusetts, was that the individual mandate penalty would bring those people into the system and have them participate. The penalty right now is probably too low, and that’s something I think ideally we would fix.”
How to critics respond: by attacking the label of architect” Gruber denied being the “architect” of the health law. “I am not a political adviser nor a politician” : Politico.
“You’ve heard it straight from the architect of ObamaCare’s mouth,” FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon countered. “The substantially higher insurance premiums that Americans will face on the exchanges this year mean ObamaCare ‘is working as designed.’ Jonathan Gruber and the Obama administration really must believe that voters are stupid, as Gruber infamously said on multiple occasions.”
“The fact of the matter is that President Obama promised that insurance premiums would decline under ObamaCare. That was a lie. He promised that Americans could keep the health plans they had and liked. That was a lie.”
“With premiums rising, ObamaCare cooperatives failing, fewer than expected consumers enrolling in costly health plans under the law, and insurers withdrawing their participation in the exchanges, we can only assume that the eventual collapse of ObamaCare is also by design.”
“Of course, Democrats will continue to try to sell us more socialist snake oil by telling voters that single-payer health care is the only answer. But when ObamaCare collapses, how can Democrats possibly expect any American to believe that more government centralization of health care will work?”
