Yes, Jonathan Gruber was a key architect in designing Obamacare. Don’t listen to the administration’s attempts to diminish Gruber’s role. Instead, examine the documents reviewed by people like Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller.
A top Obama administration health official considered putting MIT economist Jonathan Gruber to work on Obamacare to be an initiative of such “key political importance” that it was expedited because of “political push” from the Obama administration, emails released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveal.
The agency released 750 pages of heavily-redacted records on Monday to The Daily Caller and other news outlets in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
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In one telling exchange after Gruber’s Obamacare work was first reported in 2010, one HHS analyst told another that having Democrats in charge “across the board” would “stop some scrutiny” into the arrangement. Gruber’s work attracted scrutiny because the Obama administration failed to disclose the academic’s support for the health-care law without disclosing that he was paid $392,000 to help craft it.
The biggest takeaway from the emails is that they undermine one claim made by the Obama administration that Gruber was merely a bit player in the development of Obamacare. Described by many as the “architect” of the health-care law, Gruber was thrown under the bus after numerous videos surfaced last year of him bragging that Obamacare was passed because of “a lack of transparency” into the law and because the American people “were too stupid” to realize they were being manipulated into supporting it.
The email exchanges released Monday indicate that Gruber, who implemented his proprietary economic models to help mold Obamacare, was regularly involved in email conversations and conference calls with top level White House officials and others in HHS and the Treasury Department.
