Obamacare’s smoking gun

Is this Obamacare’s smoking gun?

I’m talking about this now-famous clip from last year of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. He was a consultant on Romneycare and Obamacare and he admitted that healthcare reform was a cleverly-disguised tax designed to trick stupid voters into permitting the government to transfer money from healthy people to sick people.

The voters could not be told that because, “If you had a law which said healthy people were going to pay in, it made explicit that healthy people were going to pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”

Since then, at least six videos have surfaced of Dr. Gruber admitting it took slight of hand to get Obamacare passed. Although, saying these things at videotaped public conferences seems a terrible way to keep a secret. Except, what exactly is the secret here? That the Affordable Care Act was a way to get healthy people to pay for sick people?

Isn’t that pretty much the way all insurance works? Let’s say you have car insurance, you make your payments faithfully every month, and you go ten years without an accident – you’ve just spent ten years paying for other peoples’ accidents.

But this clip has energized conservatives who see a chance to go back to a free market system, without government subsidies. I’ve seen that system on TV.

Apparently, there was a time when, if you were poor, you could pay Dr. Welby with some fresh eggs from the henhouse.

Although I don’t recall him replacing hips and heart valves.

But I do know this. Whatever new system gets passed, it will involve taking money from healthy people and transferring it to sick people. When that new system comes up for a vote, just as restaurants never serve squid, only calamari, it’ll have to be called something else.