That's Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and one of the architects of Obamacare. By now most of the world knows of his candid - and honest - explanation of how the Obama administration was able to get the (not so) Affordable Care Act passed.
His explanation provides a most interesting look behind the scenes at what was supposed to be the most transparent administration in our nation's history.
Here's the quote:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…"
