Washington, DC - The new Republican-controlled Congress is all set to focus on the undoing of Obamacare when it convenes on January 3.
"Meanwhile, the members of the new Senate and House majorities are busy gathering powerful new evidence that the architects of the healthcare law relied on deceit to foist it on the American people," according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens.
In addition, he said, the Supreme Court is set to rule in June on whether a critical component of the law - universal premium subsidies for low- and middle-income policy holders - will continue to apply for all applicants.
"It would be a near-fatal blow to the law if the Court rules that the government cannot offer tax credits to individuals who live in the 36 states that did not establish state-run Obamacare exchanges. Premiums would skyrocket out of the reach of the very people the law was supposed to protect."
Jonathan Gruber, an MIT health care economist, made headlines this week when a video tape surfaced in which he said passage of Obamacare by Democrats in the Senate and House in 2010 was enabled by what he called "the stupidity of the American Voter." His comments were significant because, as a so-called architect of Obamacare, he played a very important role in drafting the law and, thus, is presumed to be a knowledgeable insider.
But, Weber said, perhaps it is more interesting to note that Gruber, himself, believes that healthcare subsidies for those living in states without their own exchanges are not permitted under the provisions of Obamacare. He pointed out that Gruber made this unequivocal statement at a 2012 presentation: "I think 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."
In the new video, recorded at a 2013 University of Pennsylvania conference, Gruber says essentially that the healthcare law's complexity obscured the fact that it constitutes a vast redistribution of wealth. Healthcare expert Avik Roy at Forbes magazine wrote earlier this week that the law, in effect, compels the young and healthy to pay for the healthcare needs of the old and unhealthy.
"Gruber points out that if Democrats had been honest about these facts, and that the law's individual mandate is in effect a major tax hike, Obamacare would never have passed Congress," Roy noted.
Weber, meanwhile, said he believes that Gruber's comments will provide enormous support for efforts to replace Obamacare with a law that is fair, equitable and empowering for the individual.
"No matter what he says going forward in an attempt to walk back his statements, as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, he cannot flatly deny that he said the law does not provide for universal premium subsidies for all needy policy-holders. As for the anticipated GOP efforts in the new Congress, Gruber will be hard-pressed to retract his stated belief that if Democrats in the know had told the truth at the time Obamacare was originally proposed, it would not have passed muster. After all, he was there when the law was being written and has inside information."
