Obamacare architect: We ripped off the feds for about 400 million a year
Fox News and other media outlets have posted new videos this morning featuring Obamacare "architect" Jonathan Gruber, who made news last week for remarks he made in 2013 describing how Obamacare was passed due to the "stupidity" of the American voter. The latest video shows Gruber bragging how the Massachusetts health care system, often referred to as Romneycare, worked by ripping off millions of taxpayer dollars from the federal government.
The new videos, including one from a January 2012 forum, shows Gruber discussing the Massachusetts health care overhaul under then-Gov. Mitt Romney. Gruber boasted that the state was able to rip off American taxpayers for hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars with the help of the late Senator Ted Kennedy.
"The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the feds paid for our bill, okay?" Gruber said. "In Massachusetts we had a very powerful senator you may know named Ted Kennedy. ... Ted Kennedy and smart people in Massachusetts had basically figured out a way to sort of rip off the feds for about 400 million dollars a year."
According to Fox news, another video, reported by Watchdog.org and shot by TrueNorthReports.com, Gruber "mocked a critic during a Vermont House committee hearing examining a publicly financed health program. At the hearing, a lawmaker read aloud one comment that warned of 'ballooning costs' and 'bureaucratic outrages.'"
As the people attending the hearings began laughed, Gruber said: "Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?"
The Fox news report says that according to Watchdog.org, Gruber is currently being paid to advise the state of Vermont on devising new health care plan. Watchdog.org says it has spoken with the man who wrote the comment that elicited Gruber's arrogant remark, former state senator and Reagan adviser John McClaughry.
"No one should trust this man," McClaughry reportedly told Watchdog.org. "Based on the rest of the stuff that's come out on the videos, nobody can trust this guy."
Democrats have been scrambling to explain away Gruber's comments and at least one, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has claimed she never even heard of him. During an appearance on CNN, White House press secretary Jay Carney said, "It's not good"and acknowledged Gruber helped write ObamaCare and the Massachusetts law.
Carney said Gruber "speaks from the ivory tower with remarkable hubris about the American voter and by extension the American Congress. To speak that way [is] very harmful politically to the president."
President Obama has yet to address Gruber's remarks publicly.
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