Washington Post Writer Fails to Fact Check Nancy Pelosi's Jonathan Gruber Denial

November 13th, 2014 2:22 PM

The Obamacare architect that dares not speak his name. At least from the lips of Democrats who nowadays are pretending to have little or no knowledge of Jonathan Gruber. The most prominent of the Gruber denialists is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi quoted by Washington Post reporter Sean Sullivan whose story headline also featured this denial: "I don't know who he is. He didn't help write our bill."

Gee. If Nancy Pelosi said that then it must be true! If you think me a bit too credulous for accepting Pelosi denial without checking her veracity, well that is exactly what Sullivan did. Absolutely no fact checking. Of course, in this Age of the Web, fact checking is relatively easy. No need to pound the pavement in the hot sun or extreme cold hunting down leads as in the old days. All Sean needed to do was type in some words like "Nancy Pelosi Jonathan Gruber" into Google and sift through the results. Hey, he could have even sipped on some coffee and enjoyed a jelly doughnut while performing this far from arduous task. If he had done so he would have soon found Pelosi's House Speaker website post of December 1, 2009 which was chock full of Gruber.

In fact Pelosi's site was so full of Gruber that she cited  a whole sentence with him in bold  towards the top of the page in answer to the "myth" that Obamacare would result in higher premiums:

MYTH: The House health insurance reform bill would result in higher premiums.

FACT: An analysis of the House bill by noted MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber concludes that the bill would result in lower premiums than under current law for the millions of Americans using the newly-established Health Insurance Exchange – including those who are not receiving affordability credits to help them purchase coverage.

Okay, so pay attention, Sean. Here are some more Gruber citations from the same page:

The Gruber analysis shows that, on the Exchange...

Gruber also points out that...

Like Gruber, CBO found that...

And finally this Gruber encore in the form of a link (that no longer works):

For the Gruber analysis, please click here.

So if you need some help with Web searches, Sean, just hand me a cup of java and a doughnut and I'm good to go.