What's up with this Jonathan Gruber guy?
 

I'm just asking.

His wiki-bio says

Jonathan Holmes Gruber is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate. He is an associate editor of both the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics. Gruber has been heavily involved in crafting public health policy. He was a key architect of both the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform, sometimes referred to as "Romneycare", and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as "Obamacare".

This guy is just another so called intellectual professor that worked on Obamacare saying 3 times that we average people were not smart enough to understand it, and lies needed to be told to us to get the Bill passed.
It was not a tax,you could keep your insurance and doctor if you wanted, etc. etc. were just a few of the many lies told to get it passed.
He visited the White House over 36 times during it's formation.
Great example for our kids from Obama, it's OK to lie to get what you want. What a cool guy.
I guess we just became smart on November 4 2014. :)

I think it's most likely he's just a *bit* arrogant. Also, the claims he's reported as making aren't even really true.

More importantly...the ACA has increased the number of insured, it's improving the health of those now insured, it's dramatically slowing the rise in costs and more insurers are competing in the marketplaces.

Bill isn't perfect but so far it's working as intended.

You're full of crap Spence.
What in this administration is it lies. He's on an apology tour as we speak trying to take those words back.
My insurance has switched because of Obamacare and it is now costing me thousands more. Companies are looking for less expensive policies which in turn cost workers a lot more money.
My health cost for my family are now in the order of $24,000 a year.
The healthcare sucks too
You can spin it that healthcare costs were going to spin out of control anyways . Have at it
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Bull $hit, my families health costs are through the roof...
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Please Spence enough BULLCRAP....his statements were very true....he said it and ment it..."U R STUPID"...I did not say that about U so do not take it personally...:)


A friend of mine son got an increase of almost 400 bucks cost of increase to his OBAMACARE......also co pays have increased....if the federal judges decide aganist subsidies Obamacare should be sunk.If supreme court had any balls they would convene to throw the law out

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/4-a...hem/ar-BBdsA8r

Spence, facts and sources please. Most likely's don't count.

The intelligentsia (intellectuals considered as a group or class, especially as a cultural, social, or political elite) finally get caught on tape speaking the "truth" on the current state of the electorate, and all we talk about is ACA?

"the ACA...it's dramatically slowing the rise in costs"

When your love was selling the bill, not once did I ever hear him say that as a result of the ACA, "costs would go up, but at a slower pace than before". What I did hear, was that costs would dcerease. Something about the average family saving $2500 a year? Ring a bell?

Once again, like the stimulus keeping unemployment under 8%, it seems Obama is promising one thing, delivering something else. Some call that the old bait and switch. I'd love to see you explain why that's not the case here.

Spence is correct when he says that cost of healthcare is increasing at a slower pace than usual. I think it was increasing by about 8% per year, now it's increasing by something like 4% a year. Most of that comes from Medicare paying doctors less than they did before. I don't think that helps anyone who is not on Medicare. And I also think it's naive to assume that if you pay doctors less, you are getting the same level of service. Something has to give, and at some point, doctors will stop seeing Medicare patients.

I would like to coin the phrase "back doored socialized medicine" and claim the rights to the website

backdooredsocializedmedicine.com

There's plenty of information out there.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/1...2.html?hp=r2_3

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...estimates.html

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...l#.VGeeUmc9TDM

Considering the technical issues during the roll-out it's pretty impressive.

All bills are written in a convoluted and tortured way. Fox tried to jump on this and claim his remarks prove the bill was intentionally deceiving...that's not the case.

"not the case"

WTF are you smoking? it certainly IS the case
and the rest of the media should have covered this and not been biased, shame on them. Fox news seems to be about the only news source with enough balls to cover this and tell the truth.

We've discussed at length how the 8% was based on CBO data that was way off...

As for the $2500. I believe the objective for that target was to reduce health care spending by 1% of GDP which when averaged led to the $2500 per family. It wasn't intended to be a forecast of individual savings...but it came off that way.

What happened to the facts and sources saying Gruber's statements weren't really true ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o65v...layer_embedded

Here is a video where someone said that it would reduce cost for a family of 4 by $2500 NINETEEN times, hardly a statement that was interpreted incorrectly..

How about Politifact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ance-premium-/

I said the claims about his statements weren't true...

His remarks were just highlighting his frustration with how legislation is formed. The CBO sets standards that must be met and so law has to be twisted to fit the standards so it sounds good. Everybody does it and there's nothing unique in the ACA in this regard.

What he said that simply isn't true are the remarks that elements of the bill weren't discussed in a transparent manner, hell there was probably more open and bi-partisan debate on the ACA than any bill in history.

It's being "reported" that his remarks show the people were duped. If that's true than pretty much all laws could be shown to be manipulative.

Yep...designed in secret...

Source: http://www.finance.senate.gov/issue/...f-f65215c1ba65

as is often the case, the only one making claims about his statements that aren't true seems to be you ...most seem content with his "actual" statement...you know....what he "actually" said....which was very clear and revealing and which I don't think you've referenced directly and perhaps not even read yet.......that you "believe" or have divined that he intended to suggest or mean something completely different than what he is actually on record and quoted as saying is not unusual or surprising :screwy:

I've read all his statements.

Some in their attempt to manufacture scandal are missing the real point which could make the country better...such a shame.

The thing that would make the country better would be complete transparency honesty
and true statesmen, not legacy mongers.

the "shame" lies with "some" who condone, defend and support lying, corruption and the torture of language and the perversion of our political and legislative process in their delusion that doing so will somehow "make the country better" ......:rollem:

If you're so convinced Obama Care is so great why don't you put your $ where your mouth is and drop what you have now and sign up.
I'll be everything I own you won't, just like every other fraud who says it's great.

Yes, I should give up my work benefits and pay on my own. That makes a whole lot of sense.
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Why not.
You think it's so great for everyone else.
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Obamacare poll drops to new low by the American people down to 37% approval.
Yes, it's doing exceedingly well.

What a waste of time and $$$ when it could have been spent on improving the economy.

Back to the OP topic - whats up with Gruber. Here is an explanation from the Vast Right Wind Media mogul: CNN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLOV4oUXawg

http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/17/gr...h-issue-video/

he sounds like a pompous ass pot stirrer

Just think of how successful it's going to look with 5 million new enrolled in a few weeks.
On the down side, all these soon to be legals won't be paying the premiums. We will be paying for them....
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That's 5 million new potential votes for the Democratic Party in the next elections (smart move on that agenda)

They will be able to collect Social Security and open to disability too if they establish some form of work too won't they?
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Not likely.
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Gruber is just another in the long line of progressive "reformers" who have twisted and tortured our language, logic, and laws to achieve ends which they could not have done with truth or "transparency." The earliest progressives openly admitted and proclaimed how they would transform America, and explained why it was, according to them, needed. But they could only succeed, with such honesty, in influencing academic minds. They did, however, institute some, important political machinery such as the progressive income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the direct popular election of federal Senators. These were powerful instruments for future progressive change. But their transparent approach made it difficult to maintain the progressive traction, running into some SCOTUS roadblocks as well as the historical American culture with its roots in individual freedom and rule of constitutional law--until their resort to the tricky and less than honest maneuvers of FDR and the New Deal.

One of the most influential of FDR's first braintrust was Rexford Tugwell. He was the personification of progressivism on steroids. And he set a pattern of manipulation that has marked the passage of progressive legislation ever since. He was also the quintessence of the progressive mind with its belief in the necessity of an all powerful central government run by experts in order to achieve the harmonious utopia of an ordered, peaceful, secure, certain, predictive, and egalitarian society. A society which could only be achieved by central planners. And one which could only be achieved by undoing the previous century of laissez faire economy and the abolition of business as individual endeavor for individual profit. A society where capital was a social purpose and industry was a social function--achieved when, as he put it, "industry is government and government is industry."

His brain overflowed with ideas on how a new world could or would be planned. And planned it must be. The great and important aspects of society could not just happen, as he said for example, "new industries will not just happen as the automobile industry did, they will have to be foreseen, to be argued for, to seem probably desirable features of the whole economy before they can be entered upon." He even wrote a whole new constitution which would be the governing blueprint for the "New States of America."

At the time, the early 1930's, the progressives saw the Soviet Union as more a model of a successful society than the old American constitutional order. And Tugwell no less saw it the same way. He claimed that "the future is becoming visible in Russia."

But the future would require "the laying of rough, unholy hands on many a sacred precedent, doubtless calling on an enlarged and nationalized police power for enforcement." And only the federal government could be the effective "instrument of control." So "planning will necessarily become a function of the federal government; either that or the planning agency will supersede that government." And he helped create some of the first such federal planning agencies for The New Deal. And the federal government has expanded them to well over 300 such regulatory agencies today (EPA, FDA, etc., etc.), and they supersede much of our government.

He foresaw a lengthy road to the transformation into utopia which would require two series of changes. The second involved the elimination of business or its disappearance from industry. The guidance of capital uses, adjusting production to consumption, controlling prices and profit margins, insurance of purchasing power (for example, today, the constant call for minimum wages and the call for raising them).

The first series of changes "would have to do with statutes, with constitutions, and with government." And so, through those series of changes, " a civil service loyalty and fervor will need to grow gradually . . . little by little that road will begin to suggest itself as the way to a civilized industry . . . years of gradual modification accompanied by agonies and recriminations, . . . without much visible gain, then . . . the last link will . . . find its place and suddenly we shall discover that we have a new world . . ."

So the "laying of those rough hands" would necessarily be placed on the Constitution, American culture and rule of law, and on the economic system which fostered and was fueled by individual initiative. And the road to transformation progressed from FDR and the New Deals, to LBJ and the great society, and now to Obama and the ACA (the hoped for progressive "last link"?). And the federal government has expanded its scope and size nearing that to which Tugwell aspired. And individual initiative is squeezed into smaller spaces and numbers, into a society where "you didn't build that." Society did.

Tugwell admitted that the legislative schemes he helped promote for the New Deal were "tortured interpretations of a document [the Constitution] intended to prevent them." And now Gruber admits to tortured language and lack of transparency (lies) to get the ACA passed. And the Great Society was built on the utopian fiction of a war on poverty.

Of course, poverty has not been defeated but has expanded. Tugwell's vision of planned economy visible in the Soviet Union of the 1930's has evaporated. And, if the ACA is not eliminated, we will eventually go through the tortured phases of transforming private health insurance into single payer universal health care administered by the federal government.

Hayek would have called all this a road to serfdom. Tugwell, FDR, LBJ, Obama, all the progressives would call it a road to a new world. Huxley might have seen it progress into a Brave New World. Take your pick.

But the important thing, as Spence says, is not the tortured, lying, verbiage. The important thing is something good for the country. So if you pick the progressive road, and if it is necessary to say untrue things or make impossible promises to do good for the country, you have to understand that most people are not smart enough to understand what the good is. The qualified experts do know what the good is. And, whatever means, including lying, are necessary to give the ignorant or stupid people the good, then . . . that is good.

surely folks like Spence, now that the pendulum is swinging(interesting if you've read the articles proclaiming the Republican party "dead" over the last several years and the predictions of democrats maintaining power for the foreseeable future), will have nothing to say if the other side engages in "tortured, lying, verbiage" having condoned and defended it all these years, ignores established law and the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold , rams laws through the legislative process without regard to process, selectively enforce, or not, laws and modify them as seen fit from the executive branch or if future presidents should stroll to the podium and proclaim executive orders ignoring the separation of powers....in order to "do something good for the country":D