Say my name. ---Walter White aka Heisenberg in Breaking Bad.
New York Times writer Robert Pear knows his name but he didn't say it in his article about how four words in the Obamacare law was simply a mistake. Pear quotes a number of people involved in the law's writing process but fails to mention the one who was acknowledged as the architect of Obamacare...until it became politically inconvenient to do so---Jonathan Gruber. And the reason why Gruber's name went unmentioned in the article is because of his claim, recorded for all eternity on video, that only state established health exchanges would be eligible for subsidies.
Let us now watch Pear make his case in his Gruber-free zone that it was all just a mistake:
WASHINGTON — They are only four words in a 900-page law: “established by the state.”
But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court.
How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery. Who wrote them, and why? Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges?
Who wrote them, Pear? You know the name of the most prominent of the writers. Say his name. Saaaaay it!!! Okay, since you won't say his name, let us watch Obamacare Jonathan Gruber himself explain how the subsidies work and who gets them:
What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.
But...but did Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber really write Obamacare? As the Daily Caller has revealed, Gruber most definitely wrote Obamacare:
Much like the loathsome pot-smoking professor in “Animal House” who plays the guitar for his young female students, Jonathan Gruber has a need to impress. In a lecture captured on video, he admitted that he “helped write” Obamacare. He was telling the truth.
...As The New York Times’ Paul Krugman wrote during the 2008 primary, Clinton was better suited to write the health reform bill than Obama. Whose analysis did Krugman cite in making that determination? Jonathan Gruber’s. Make no mistake. The health-care law never needed Barack Obama. But it always involved Jonathan Gruber.
...Gruber’s speaker bio was pretty clear that he “helped craft” the law. The professor spoke at a June 27 panel sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and The Commonwealth Fund, and bragged about his work with the Obama administration and Congress.
Nobody was more instrumental in crafting (writing) the Obamacare law than Jonathan Gruber yet of all the names cited by Robert Pear, Gruber is notable by his absence because he doesn't fit into Pear's narrative. However, there is no fooling us, Mr. Pear. You know the name of the one most important in writing Obamacare. We know you know his name. And you know we know you know his name. So say it. Saaaaay his name!
