Don’t hold us to what we meant, scream democrats.
Jonathan Gruber is one of the creators of Obamacare. It turns out that the way the exchanges were designed were quite intentional:
Did Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber make the same mistake twice? A new audio clip finds him once again explaining that Obamacare subsidies are tied to state health exchanges.
A clip of Jonathan Gruber circulated last night in which he states that Obamacare subsidies are tied to the existence of state exchanges. This statement is extremely problematic for the law’s supporters because it appears to confirm the view of plaintiffs in the Halbig case, i.e. that only state-exchanges were intended to deliver subsidies.
This morning Gruber told the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn that he doesn’t know why he said it at the time in 2012. “I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake,” he claims. He added, “My subsequent statement was just a speak-o—you know, like a typo.” A typo is usually a simple slip of the finger on the keyboard, i.e. a misspelling or missed bit of punctuation. Gruber’s statement is nearly a minute long.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnEmPXEpr0[/youtube]
It wasn’t the only time he insisted on it either:
Also, it turns out it was not the only time he made such a statement. An audio clip from a public appearance Gruber made at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on January 10, 2012 reveals he made the same connection between subsidies and state-based exchanges on at least one other occasion (hat tip to MorgenR).
Obviously, Gruber can continue to claim he was wrong but it becomes harder to explain this as the equivalent of a typo when he said it more than once.
The design of the exchanges were meant to be coercion:
What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits— but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.
There’s no mistake despite any current protests by Gruber.
The whiners at MSNBC make this argument:
Far more than Gruber’s remarks or the appearance of hypocrisy on the part of the justices, the main political question for the Supreme Court is whether it is willing to strip millions of people of their ability to purchase affordable health insurance.
That is the same as saying one something is stolen and is kept long enough it is no longer stolen. Then on to this utter nonsense:
Pointing to University of Texas law professor Josh Blackman, another legal analyst who made a similar observation, Hasen asked, “Is Roberts, and I would say, is Kennedy, going to be willing to deny health care subsidies to millions of people because of what Jon Stewart has called a typo?”
Firstly, Jon Stewart is hardly the nation’s foremost legal authority. Second, let me again harken back to the words of John Roberts:
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
democrats could have passed a law that seizes the assets of all conservatives and distributes them to illegal aliens, but that makes it neither right nor Constitutional.
Again, MSNBC:
Virtually all of the law’s supporters, from the lawmakers who voted for it it to the president who signed it, say that the subsidies were always meant to be available to federally run exchanges.
They had the chance to write it so it said exactly that. They didn’t. They wanted it to be a tool of coercion, of manipulation, of extortion, to punish red states.
It is written the way they meant it to be.
If people lose their subsidies, they can blame those who wrote this POS, not SCOTUS. The argument that the words of the Obamacare architect should carry no legal weight is utterly absurd.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.