Architect of Obama's health care plan fears a 'political' decision by the Supreme Court, says Romney's lying
Jonathan Gruber. econ-www.mit.edu
1:40 pm Nov. 16, 201119
Jonathan Gruber, a key intellectual architect of President Obama's overhaul of the American health care system, is a little frustrated.
"I'm frustrated that the future of the American health care system rests in the hands of one or two of these unelected people who might make the decision based on political grounds," Gruber, an M.I.T. professor, told me in a phone interview on Monday, a few hours after the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to hear challenges to the Affordable Care Act. "It's very disturbing."
The court consolidated several different challenges and will hear a host of issues related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010, granting a full five-and-a-half hours for oral argument. But the central question is whether Congress can require people to buy health insurance, and, if not, whether that mandate can be severed from the rest of the bill.
Gruber, whose ideas also made up the landmark overhaul of health care in Massachusetts that was overseen by then-governor Mitt Romney, thinks that the Obama health care package would still be better than nothing if the mandate were removed, but said that it wouldn't be nearly as effective. He explained that the requirement to buy insurance puts more healthy people into the overall pool, and that if companies are not allowed to screen for pre-existing conditions, which is one of the more popular aspects of the bill, consumers would simply buy health care once they're sick, which would in turn drive up premiums.
Without the mandate, Gruber said, the bill would only cover a third to half as many people, and that premiums go up 20 to 30 percent.
"The mandate is really the glue that holds this act together," Gruber said.
"I still think it's good policy," he said. "I still think that it's a better use of public dollars than the alternative. I still think that the totality of the package is deficit-reducing. It will be even more deficit-reducing because you only spend three-quarters as much instead of 100 percent as much.
"So I still think it's worth doing, but it goes from a good idea to better than nothing. I guess that's how I'd summarize it. You know, I think basically, what they've constructed, the Affordable Health Act, is the best possible private-sector solution to our problem of the uninsured that we have available, you know, short of single-payer. And I think it's not that anymore.
"You get rid of the mandate, it just becomes a big government expenditure, which will cover a bunch of people, and that's great, and I'm all for spending money to do that. Then it just becomes standard old, 'expand health care with the public money,' nothing really innovative anymore."
Gruber said he understands the political motivation for Republicans to be trying to dismantle the bill.
"Look, if this succeeds, then Obama becomes F.D.R. This is the most important social policy accomplishment since the 1960s. And if this succeeds, this could be the kind of benefit to the Democratic Party that Social Security was. So if I was the Republicans, I'd be screaming and kicking and scratching to kill it too, on purely political grounds," he said.
He also said, "On politics, this is your Waterloo. You've got to fight this tooth and nail. And so they're fighting it tooth and nail. It's not just the mandate, they're picking on everything."
Gruber was also frustrated with Democrats, who still express ambivalence about the bill and the mandate, with one recent Kaiser poll showing only 52 percent of Democrats currently support it.
"I really honestly feel in my soul that if I sat down and could talk to Democratic voters and explain what's in the bill, that would go from 52 to 75 percent," he said. "I really do believe that. It's so consistent with Democratic ideals in so many ways that it's just a matter of misunderstanding and misinformation."
To that end, he's writing a graphic novel explaining the bill, which will be published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux in December. He said the opponents were mostly to blame for the bill's bad press, and only sort of entertained a question about whether the Obama administration could have done a better job of selling it.
"I guess I would like to think so, but at the same time, these are smart guys," he said. "It's kind of like criticizing the manager of a baseball team. I can criticize all I want but at the end of the day these guys are more qualified to do it than I am. So, you know, I wish they could have sold it better but it's not like I have some brilliant idea for how they could have done that."
Gruber said Republicans were actually less opposed to the mandate, which is going to be under scrutiny by the court, than they were to other provisions of the health care bill, given that the mandate was an essentially conservative idea that had currency with conservative intellectuals in the early 1990s. I asked about the difference between this plan and the kind that was espoused by former House speaker Newt Gingrich back then (and, briefly, in May of this year).
"Zero difference," he said. "This is, to my mind, the most blatantly obvious case of politics trumping policy I've ever seen in my life. Because this is an idea, that four or five years ago, Republicans were touting. A guy from the Heritage Foundation spoke at the bill signing in Massachusetts about how good this bill was."
He credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign, but said Romney's attempt to distinguish between Obama's bill and his own is disingenuous.
"The problem is there is no way to say that," Gruber said. "Because they're the same fucking bill. He just can't have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying. The only big difference is he didn't have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes."
To Gruber, the stakes for the court's decision couldn't be higher.
"Basically, this is the last hope for a free-market solution for covering the uninsured. If this fails, then you either give up on the uninsured or you go to single-payer. Those are the only two options left. And the Republicans, if they're willing to stand up and say, 'We give up on the uninsured,' then great, let them say that and let the voters come to the polls and decide, but they won't say that.
"Anyway, I'm just ranting because I'm upset."
UPDATE: Romney responds, sort of.
"The future of the American health care system rests in the hands of one or two of these unelected people...It's very disturbing." Says the unelected MIT professor who is architect of the overhaul of the entire U.S. health care system.
amen brother
If you want to have this individual mandate, then try to pass a constitutional amendment creating the power to do so. The constitution has limits placed on government and requires enumerated powers to be able to do anything from the federal level. And your right on Romney...except that he argues that its a state's rights issue. Which I am not against entirely, because you can move out of state, but there is nowhere for a conservative to move out of country.
Privileged and upset, he means. A guy working for MIT and with his hands this far in the political process for this long has no idea what folks like me on Main Street are about. I don't have insurance because it's a bad deal that eats up more than 10% of my annual income just for the monthly premium--not including co-pays, spend downs, etc. I haven't ever in my entire adult life spent 10% of my annual income on paying full price for my medical needs and the needs of my family.
And he lies. Single-payer isn't the only option, as attractive as it is. There's also the public option. Oh, but this isn't REALLY about free-market solutions, free enterprise, or competition, or else that option would have been considered. It wasn't because privileged people like Gruber and his buddies in the Insurance Racket Lobby group didn't want a solution that would be competition to insurance companies.
I was a Democrat until this Health Insurance Bailout passed. Never again. They are as worse, if not worse than, Republicans.
No, see, one's a state bill. One is federal. And as you're about to find out next year, and as many of us have known all along, the latter is Unconstitutional. That's just ONE of the reasons that the two bills are not the same.
Quote of the day. "It's the same fucking bill." Awesome! Go MIT
Robert Wenzel over at economicpolicyjournal has the best take down of this delusional s.o.b. and his twisted reasoning.
Great get on the interview.
Obama once said, he will made reform of the American health care system his top domestic priority when he entered the White House. Hopefully, American health care system be better... home defense.. let's go MIT!!
Sorry, no. You cannot force Americans to buy crappy overpriced products from for-profit insurance companies that this administration in collusion with influential lobbyists for the industry is trying to foist on a captive market. Single-payer or bust.
It is unconstitutional to make Americans pay for health care if they can not afford it
The individual mandate is only the wedge. The law contains 2000 pages of directions for the writing of hundreds of rules and regulations to be written by numerous, "unelected" bureaucrats. No one truly understands all aspects of the impacts, intended and unintended, other than the fact that you and I - and our doctor - will have lost control of our health care. Only the bureaucrats will have the answer. Except that, like the incredibly complex tax system neither will they. If you call the IRS and ask them how to handle a tax problem, they will not stand behind the advice they give you. How can we stay in compliance with all of the massive, federally mandated regs? We woun't be able to. Goodbye liberty and freedom of choice. That is the real unconstitutionality of this act.
Mr. Gruber, the MIT brainiac, just can't understand what a true free market solution is and how it would work. It this doesn't perpetuate the egghead label for eastern intellectuals, nothing will.
Obama's folly has nothing to do with "free market", or free anything other than another application of free crony capitalism creating barriers to entry so that only Blue Cross and the ilk could possibly play. Perhaps one day the light bulb will go on in the eggheads' gourd and they will understand that the free market starts with the consumer, not the insurance companies, hospitals or the government.....then again maybe not.
noborders, methinks you are going to have to bust - thankfully
Health care LEGISLATION becomes health care REFORM when it provides universal lifetime access, reduces health care costs, and improves public health. The Affordable Care Act, even with an intact mandate and working perfectly, leaves millions of Americans uninsured and many millions more underinsured. It will increase costs by compelling the purchase of more private health insurance policies. And it will not improve public health because it still leaves poor Americans the unhappy choice of spending their last dollar on food or on health care.
The Affordable Care Act is not reform. It was creation of the insurance industry lobby (Elizabeth Fowler) to protect the health of the insurance industry. It does this admirably. It compels all Americans to purchase products from a for-profit industry and compels the government to purchase those products for them if Americans find them unaffordable. It will not provide universal care, reduce costs, or improve health. President Obama will not be the next FDR; he will be the next Jimmy Carter, a politician so principled that he leaves a legacy of ashes and the faint memory of good intentions.
Dr. Gruber says the ACA is not as good a single payer system, which proved itself around the world and even within the US as the best way to provide universal cost-effective health care. He is correct. Scrap the ACA and get a health system that Dr. Gruber endorses: single payer.
Iowa looms just hours away. All of the media outlets and commentators (which includes FOX), have done their best to discredit the other candidates except for Mitt Romney. A little research will uncover the truth to the Iowa voters, that Mitt Romney and the Obama administration were in collusion with one another and their individual Health Care initiatives. Even Gingrich credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign and said Romney's attempt to distinguish between Obama's bill and his own is disingenuous. It is a sorry day, if Mitt Romney is chosen as the GOP runner. He is the only one that President Obama can prove Romney agrees with every health care issue. Mitt has never denied this except to say he wouldn't push it because it should be a state by state issue. But he is strongly in favor of Government control and higher spending. I say (out of the frying pan, into the fire).
Frank E. Vincent
Iowa looms just hours away. All of the media outlets and commentators (which includes FOX), have done their best to discredit the other candidates except for Mitt Romney. A little research will uncover the truth to the Iowa voters, that Mitt Romney and the Obama administration were in collusion with one another and their individual Health Care initiatives. Even Gingrich credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign and said Romney's attempt to distinguish between Obama's bill and his own is disingenuous. It is a sorry day, if Mitt Romney is chosen as the GOP runner. He is the only one that President Obama can prove Romney agrees with every health care issue. Mitt has never denied this except to say he wouldn't push it because it should be a state by state issue. But he is strongly in favor of Government control and higher spending. I say (out of the frying pan, into the fire).
Frank E. Vincent
"I still think it's good policy," he said. "I still think that it's a better use of public dollars than the alternative." says a petulant Gruber on a self desribed rant. Perhaps he forgets as many left leaning economists do that there are no public dollars. All money is private sector funding from which the government siphons off, confiscates, taxes - with the consent of the governed, of course and otherwise creates through a federal banking system outside the consent of the governed money to be used for the common good. Ah, the vague term common good. And how is it that health care is a basic human right. If so everyone has it without the statists in power dipping into my pocket to fund it.
Gruber has it all wrong and he knows it. It is a game to play and there are winners and losers. The winners are in political positions and the losers are the hoi polloi working their asses off to support a populist phrase or two in over funded campaigns. I will do my best to avoid a major collapse of my assets on behalf of these wonky idiots that believe they know best.
"And the Republicans, if they're willing to stand up and say, 'We give up on the uninsured,' then great, let them say that and let the voters come to the polls and decide, but they won't say that."
No, Republicans don't "give up on the uninsured." That is an appeal to emotion.
The correct reply is, "The federal Constitution does not give the federal government the power to compel citizens to purchase an insurance product."
If we really want the federal government to be in the health care business, let's pass a Constitutional amendment that grants this power to the federal government.
Until then, Obama-care must be repealed.