‘We Need a Larger Mandate Penalty’



Haven’t heard from this goober in quite some time and now he pops up to tell more lies. Yes, Obamacare is imploding and yes, it is working as intended by (1) destroying the private healthcare industry and (2) propelling us toward a “single payer” system of healthcare.

Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” MIT Economics Professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber argued that “The law is working as designed. However, it could work better. And I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that, we need a larger mandate penalty.”

Gruber said, “Obamacare’s not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we’ve covered 20 million, the largest expansion in american history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurors could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare.”

When asked about the 22% Obamacare premium increases, Gruber stated, “the 22% increase, let’s remember who that applies to. That applies to a very small fraction of people, who have to buy insurance without the subsidies that are available. 85% of people buying insurance on the exchanges get subsidies. And for those people, this premium increase doesn’t affect them. Now, for those remaining people, that is a problem, and that’s something that we need to address, but it’s not a crisis. It doesn’t mean the system’s collapsing. And most importantly, it doesn’t affect the 150 million Americans who get employer insurance, who have actually seen their premiums fall dramatically, relative to what was expected before Obamacare.”

Gruber later stated that there was “no sense in which” the law “has to be fixed. The law is working as designed. However, it could work better. And I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that, we need a larger mandate penalty. We have individuals who are essentially free-riding on the system, they’re essentially waiting until they get sick and then getting health insurance. The whole idea of this plan, which was pioneered in Massachusetts, was that the individual mandate penalty would bring those people into the system and have them participate. The penalty right now is probably too low, and that’s something I think ideally we would fix.”

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/10/2...e-penalty/

That guy is so disconnected from reality, it's incredible. Keep spilling it, Goober, your comments couldn't have came at a more perfect time. Perhaps Trump can pay him to go on a nationwide speaking tour, and he can also remind everyone how it was called 'Hillarycare' before 'Obamacare'.

When I am emperor, Gruber will be the first against the wall. He's the Heinrich Himmler of US Healthcare's Final Solution.

That Gruber guy would be a great heel wrestling manager. Someone people would definitely pay to see get beat up. What a pompous jerk

Gee, another left wing nut who thunks taxes are way too low on the poor and middle class (remember, it's a NEW TAX and NOT a penalty). When will the poor and middle class wake up to the fact they are being used, lied to and ripped off?

Hmmm ... let's see. Who am I going to trust?

- a fanatic who posts on a political sub-board of a college sports themed BBS, with no credentials
- a MIT professor


That's a hard one ...

Just reading the part usm quoted -- thanks by the way, I wasn't going to click on that link -- I'm failing to see how anything he said there is either wrong or evil.

It's perfectly valid to disagree with the foundational ideology and to advocate for a different school of thought or a different system altogether.


But within the system we have enacted, within that context, what he said seems perfectly reasonable and correct, to me.