By now the insulting comments by Obamacare advisor and Affordable Care Act designer
Jonathan Gruber are well known. If you need a primer read these
two articles or Google it; theres no shortage of data.
My friend Saurabh Jha a radiologist of powerful intelligence and wit thinks
Gruber is to be applauded for his intellectual honesty. Not quite. Jonathan Grubers odious dismissal of his fellow citizens lays bare the poisoned apparatus for making health policy in our country. His smug we showed them attitude reflects that healthcare policy generation in the U.S. is driven by a cabal of crony capitalists a small army of disdainful contemptuous ideologues who have played footsie with each other the government and the healthcare industry for years decades even.
They are a treacherous clique that cultivates personal riches and power at the expense of Americans who have been struggling with a hyper-expensive and equally inefficient healthcare system for nearly five decades now. The healthcare industry we have which mostly
sucks is one
theyve mostly designed and now their grandiose redesign in the form of the ACA or Obamacare is being shoved down the throats of people many of whom neither want nor need it.
Gruber however showcases a special kind of repugnance. Before Grubers comments were unearthed by investment analyst Richard Weinstein I predicted with eerie accuracy that the administrations view of Americans as
stupid was a central element to their strategy. In fact here is the paragraph from my
e-book which went live days before Weinstein went public with the first video clip:
Both policy makers and industry leaders believe we are too stupid and too lazy to extricate ourselves; if Id been in their shoes I would have executed the same kind of policy land grab that they did. And if we dont change the way we live pretty soon we will prove them right. The nature of politics is simply that you do what you must to gain keep or expand power. That is the essence of Obamacare: the centralization of power in Washington and the institutions and industry with which our political leaders have created the most outrageous bed of crony capitalism in our culture.
It is inconceivable that any liberal Democrat working on a health reform package that intentionally befuddled could have done anything different from what Gruber says they did. It was the only way to accomplish their goals: command control and manipulation of the population through confusion and complexity. It is further unthinkable that this craven little coven of acolytes could have possibly strayed from their let them eat cake strategy which Gruber now gloats over.
Amazingly Gruber
has made millions selling his wisdom to the feds causing no apparent discomfort to the
OWS nitwits. Gruber by any persons definition is part of the 1 as the National Review correctly notes because even without pimping himself out to the feds for the opportunity to screw Americans hes doing
quite well at
MIT. The last thing Americans object to is anyone making money. But they do have justifiable and admirable sensitivity about honesty in the marketplace; they don t like cheaters bullies and liars.
To give people like Gruber the straight-arm he deserves Americans must take greater responsibility for their own lives. There is no other reasonable path to getting government bureaucracies and their private sector enforcers (health plans hospital systems academics and large employers) emboldened and propelled by gasbags like Jonathan Gruber to
shut up and leave them alone. People who want or need to engage with the healthcare industry must be able to do it voluntarily and without compulsion. Compelling their engagement through deceit and complexity is indefensible.
Grubers gross miscalculation that people would find him cute and funny is so complete that even the
President of the United States is disavowing him and uber-Obama-hack
David Axelrod has thrown him overboard.
Republicans should make repeated and loud hay out of
statements by this chief alchemist whose
every utterance along with the addled maunderings of
Ezekiel Emanuel puts ever greater distance between the administration and the people it claims so proudly to serve. Its one thing for people to think that you are an arrogant smarmy sycophantic condescending despicable academic and quite another to keep opening your mouth and removing all doubt.
