A third clip of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has emerged, this time of the MIT professor speaking to a University of Rhode Island crowd in 2012 about the health care law’s so-called “Cadillac tax” — and bragging at the utter inability of the American people to comprehend its complexities.
The “Cadillac tax” requires that insurance companies, not individual policy holders, pay the difference between higher- and lower-cost packages — a plan that was pushed into realization by then-Sen. John Kerry, Mr. Gruber said, Fox News reported.
Mr. Gruber then said that a tax on individuals would have been “politically impossible” — but that a tax on companies would prove palatable to voters, mostly because they didn’t understand.
His comments, Fox News reported: “So basically, it’s the same thing. We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”
These audio comments followed a clip that was played on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” on Tuesday evening that showed Mr. Gruber speaking at Washington University in St. Louis about the same “Cadillac tax” and saying it passed “because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”
And before that, another clip made the media rounds of Mr. Gruber saying at a different event in 2013 that Obamacare passed due in large part to its “lack of transparency.”
His widely reported comments: “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
Mr. Gruber has since expressed regret on national television for his comments. But critics of Obamacare say his remarks only prove what many on the left really believe about Americans.
“It confirms people’s greatest fear about the government,” Sen. John Barrasso, Fox News reported. “Remember, it was Nancy Pelosi who said first you have to pass [Obamacare] before you get to find out what’s in it.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.