Obamacare. Real or a hoax perpetrated on the “stupid” American voters?

With the controversy heating up surrounding Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor and Obamacare architect, and the denial by President Obama and his fellow Democrats that Gruber was one of the authors of the bill and despite the assurance by Nancy Pelosi that "I don’t know who he is,“ and "he didn’t help write our bill," the question still remains as to the true integrity of the Affordable Care Act, and the honesty of our government.

In taking a brief look back at the tumultuous life at Obamacare, we will find a history of distortion, exaggeration, fabrication, falsification and downright lies!

Obama:

"In a Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2500 for a typical family per year.”

“If you like your plan you can keep your plan.”

“If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.”

“The uninsured will be able to sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market.”

In response to Obama’s claim on saving families $2500, Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist, said in 2008, "I know zero credible evidence to support that conclusion.“ He further said, "At the end of the day, the only way to control health-care costs in American is to deny Americans health care they want. … Basically, we just don’t know. We just have no clue what it’s going to do.”

In 2006, Obama claimed that he had “stolen ideas liberally from Jon Gruber,” and more recently at a G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, he said,“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run. … Gruber was never on the White House staff.”

So, was Jonathan Gruber really the mastermind of Obamacare?

Steve Rattner, who served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and led the Obama Administration’s successful effort to restructure the automobile industry, said, “The problem is not that Gruber helped put Obamacare together, because he was the man, the problem is what he said in the last two weeks and how the White House handled it. … Jonathan Gruber was, back in the day in 2009, the guru on health care. I remember that when I was in the White House, he was certainly viewed as an important figure in helping put Obamacare together.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Gruber visited the White House six times in 2009 and several more times in 2010. One of those meetings was a small group gathering with the President. Gruber also had multiple meetings with senior White House officials including Jeanne Lambrew, a deputy assistant to the president for health reform.”

So, we have to ask ourselves, if Gruber was not one of the architects of Obamacare, then why was he paid $400,000 as a consultant for Health and Human Services? He was then paid $400,000 by the state of Wisconsin to conduct a study on the impact of the bill, and $329,000 by the state of Minnesota to make its exchange conform with the health care bill requirements. In 2012 West Virginia paid Gruber $121,500 , and Michigan paid $481,050 for studies on their healthcare exchanges. But what is all the fuss about? People make money off the government everyday.

Because, in speeches concerning the Affordable Care Act/ Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber said:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. So it’s written to do that.”

“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, in a law that said health people are gonna pay in – if it made explicit that healthy people are gonna pay in, sick people get money, it would not have passed. Okay – just like the … people – transperen – 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 to get anything to pass.”

At the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Obama further said, “The one thing we can’t say is that we did not have a lengthy debate about health care in the United States of America. Or that it was not adequately covered. I would just advise – every press outlet here, go back and pull up every clip, every story, and I think it will – it’s fair to say there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent. Now, there were folks who disagreed with some of the various positions. It was a tough debate.”

However, if we do look back, we will find the healthcare law was extensively debated, but it was far from transparent. From the beginning, Obama promised on many occasions to include everyone in the debate and it would all be televised on C-SPAN: “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies – they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

In fact, not only was the health care law not transparent, but meetings were held behind closed doors with invitations going out to Democrats only. We cannot forget not a single Republican voted for the catastophic healthcare bill and further suffered great indignities for their negative positions on the ACA. The “Green Eggs and Ham” story still follows Ted Cruz like a black cloud, even though he was fulfilling the wishes of the constituents who elected him.

Who can forget the famous comment made by Nancy Pelosi, “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

Add insult to injury, the bill passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve. Now we all know that the House never misses a vacation or Holiday break, so should the fact that it was passed on the night before Christmas, and that the majority of our representatives had not even read the 2700 page bill, place it in the “questionable ” column.

The public’s concern in 2010 about the individual mandates, taxes, and taxpayer-funded abortion coverage, and the potential for the breakdown of the insurance market was obviously well founded. However, over the years, we have been assured that the Affordable Care Act was the best thing for the American people. Even Michelle Obama got in on the act convincing us that the ACA was best for them even if they were too stupid to know it. On the Jimmy Fallon show she said, "young people are knuckleheads!“ And why? "They’re the ones who are cooking for the first time and slice their finger open, they’re dancing on the bar stool.” Now comes the funny connection; Google defines knucklehead as a stupid person. Maybe Michelle was in on those Obamacare meetings with Gruber since, they all seem to be on the same “stupid American” page.

At the end of the day, when this is all summed up, the most important question remains: Did the President of the United States intentionally distort, mislead and lie to the American people to pass a healthcare bill to ensure his legacy regardless of the damage it would do in the end?

Short and sweet…..did the taxpayer get Obamacare via GruberGate?