Obamacare’s Architect: American voters are too stupid

The following news reports accompanied by controversial videos reveals of the mindset of (many/most?) political agents (e.g. how they think about their subjects or of each other) and of the public choice dimension—advancement of self interest than that of public welfare.

From Foxnews.com

ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber apparently doesn't think much of the intelligence of the American people.

A new tape has surfaced showing Gruber, once again, claiming the health care law's authors took advantage of the "stupid" American public.

The tape, played on Fox News' "The Kelly File," showed Gruber speaking at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis.

Referring to the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-end health plans, he said: "They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference."

Gruber specifically was referring to the way the "Cadillac tax" was designed -- he touted their plan to, instead of taxing policy holders, tax the insurance companies that offered them. He suggested that taxing individuals would have been politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn't understand the difference.

This is similar to remarks he made at a separate event around the same time in 2013. In a clip of that event, Gruber said the "lack of transparency" in the way the law was crafted was critical. "Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass," he said.

More of Gruber faux pas,  this time Mr Gruber thinks that Obamacare has to be sold to public as a health cost reduction policy, from the Washington Examiner:

Elsewhere in the address, Gruber suggested that American voters are callous by nature and would have been much more strongly opposed to Obamacare if the reduction of healthcare costs had not been framed as its chief aim.

“The dirty secret is the American voter doesn’t actually care about the uninsured," Gruber said. "The dirty secret is: You can’t really get a law passed by saying, ‘We’re helping the uninsured.’ You have to make it about cost control to get it passed. Because that’s what the American public cares about. So they had to make this law not just about the uninsured, but about cost control. That was a challenge,” he added.

In the above video, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s shifting stance on Mr. Gruber as the controversy surfaced.

Again from the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a 2009 press conference, praised MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber’s work on the Affordable Care Act, advising that reporters inspect his findings on the topic.

Today — on Nov. 13, 2014 — Pelosi told reporters that she “didn’t know who [Gruber] is,” adding that the noted economist didn’t help congressional Democrats draft the massive healthcare law.

The smoke and mirror world of politics.