Perhaps realizing that it’s a scandal that cannot be ignored in a nation that continues to dislike Obamacare, CBS News on Thursday reported on recently unearthed footage of a chief Affordable Care Act architect saying “embarrassing” things about the law’s passage, forcing the Democratic Party to go on the defense.
“MIT professor Jonathan Gruber was an intellectual architect of Obamacare,” CBS News reported. “But … at a conference last year, he said the law was written to hide crucial details from an American public too dumb to understand.”
The report continued, noting that several high-ranking Democratic officials, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are now trying to turn a Gruber “into a stranger,” some going as far as to claim that the Obamacare architect didn’t actually work on the massive healthcare law.
“But when the bill was being written, the administration paid Gruber almost $400,000 for technical advice on drafting the law,” CBS noted.
However, this is where CBS misses the mark: “Republicans, for their part, turned Gruber into an all-important player.”
Well, no. Republicans haven’t “turned Gruber into an all-important player.” Gruber is an all-important player.
On top of the money paid out for advice on the law, Gruber himself said at an event at the University of Rhode Island in 2012 that he was shuttled to the White House regularly to help draft the bill. His role in crafting the massive law is no secret.
Further, prior to Gruber’s “embarrassing” comments surfacing, the White House and its Democratic allies regularly cited his work in shaping the Affordable Care Act. So it’s not that Republicans are trying to make him into something important. Gruber is important.
