posted July 25, 2014 01:19 PM            

Gruber was paid more than $400,000 as a White House consultant during the design and passage of the Affordable Care Act. Gruber then set up a lucrative business consulting for state governments like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado on how to set up their own exchanges. On January 18, 2012, Gruber spoke before the Noblis Innovation and Collaboration Center, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia.

Gruber then: subsidies only flow through state-based exchanges

In his remarks, Gruber urged state governments to set up their own health insurance exchanges. A member of the audience asked: “It’s my understanding that if states don’t provide [exchanges], then the federal government will provide them for the states.”

Gruber responded: “What’s important to remember politically about [Obamacare] is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.” (Emphasis added.)

The video was unearthed last night by Ryan Radia of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and later highlighted by Peter Suderman of Reason.

Gruber now: it’s ‘nutty’ to assert that subsidies only flow through state-based exchanges

As Peter notes, the irony is that a year later, Gruber was deriding as “nutty” and “stupid” the contention that the Affordable Care Act required subsidies to flow through state-based exchanges.

It’s a “screwy interpretation” of Obamacare, alleged Gruber in an interview with Erika Eichelberger of Mother Jones in an article published on January 24, 2013. “It’s nutty. It’s stupid…it’s essentially unprecedented in our democracy. This was law democratically enacted, challenged in the Supreme Court, and passed the test, and now [Republicans] are trying again. They’re desperate.”

Last Tuesday, Gruber was on MSNBC’s Hardball, where he doubled down on the “criminality” of those who argue that the ACA only allows for state-based exchanges:

Chris [Matthews], it is unambiguous this is a typo. Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it’s a typo, that they had no intention of excluding the federal states. And why would they? Look, the law says that people are only subject to the mandate if they can afford insurance, if it’s less than 8 percent of their income. If you get rid of these subsidies, 99 percent of the people who would get subsidies can no longer afford insurance, so you destroy the mandate. Why would Congress set up the mandate and go through all that political battle to allow it to be destroyed? It’s just simply a typo, and it’s really criminal that this has even made it as far as it has.

Gruber has a history of saying interesting things about his favorite health law. “What we know for sure,” he told Ezra Klein in 2009, “is that [Obamacare] will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” In fact, Obamacare has increased the underlying cost of non-group health insurance by 49 percent in the average county. Now, Gruber says that Obamacare “isn’t designed to save money.”

I wrote on Tuesday that both sides are wildly exaggerating the policy implications of this D.C. court decision. If the Supreme Court upholds the appeals court ruling in Halbig v. Burwell, every state government will set up its own exchange. In other words, the ruling is nothing but a speed bump for Obamacare.

posted July 27, 2014 10:23 AM            

The wording in the law makes it crystal clear only state run exchanges are able to dispense subsidies to enrollees.

ObamaCare architect explained in 2012 video why only state exchanges pay subsidies
July 25, 2014
Ed Morrissey

....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—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges. But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this.....

.....Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who helped design the Massachusetts health law that was the model for Obamacare, was a key influence on the creation of the federal health law. He was widely quoted in the media. During the crafting of the law, the Obama administration brought him on for consultation because of his expertise. He was paid almost $400,000 to consult with the administration on the law. And he has claimed to have written part of the legislation, the section dealing with small business tax credits.

After the law passed, in 2011 and throughout 2012, multiple states sought his expertise to help them understand their options regarding the choice to set up their own exchanges. During that period of time, in January of 2012, Gruber told an audience at Noblis, a technical management support organization, that tax credits—the subsidies available for health insurance—were only available in states that set up their own exchanges.

And what he says is exactly what challengers to the administration’s implementation of the law have been arguing—that if a state chooses not to establish its own exchange, then residents of those states will not be able to access Obamacare’s health insurance tax credits. He says this in response to a question asking whether the federal government will step in if a state chooses not to build its own exchange. Gruber describes the possibility that states won’t enact their own exchanges as one of the potential “threats” to the law. He says this with confidence and certainty, and at no other point in the presentation does he contradict the statement in question.....

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/25/obamacare-architect-explained-in-2012-video-why-only-state-exchanges-pay-subsidies/

posted July 27, 2014 01:42 PM            

That was no typo in the O'BomberCare law. Demoscats who wrote the junk and then voted for the junk put those words in O'BomberCare.

Now, we find out O'Bomber has been meddling with the IRS...AGAIN. He got the IRS to omit language in a draft report on the rule regarding federal exchanges giving subsidies to O'BomberCare enrollees. These agencies are not supposed to be subject to the political whims of presidents.

July 26, 2014
Obamacare's Halbig trap
By Thomas Lifson

The Halbig case, in which the DC Circuit Court overturned Obamacare subsidies paid through the federal exchange, is generating an onslaught of evidence that destroys the contentions of the law’s supporters. The Fourth Circuit in Richmond delivered a contrary opinion justifying ignoring the language of the statute based on the overall intent of the bill, as did the dissenting opinion in the DC Circuit. But that position has now become untenable.

Clarice Feldman points out:

Instapundit readers have found some legislative history devastating to the government's claim, involving Sen. Baucus, the Democrat sponsor:

WELL, WELL, WELL: Senate Hearing : Tax Credits are available for State Exchanges Only. Senator Baucus explains how The Affordable Care Act sets conditions where Tax Credits are available for State Exchanges Only. The discussion is a bit confusing, but he’s saying that this is under the Finance Committee’s jurisdiction because the tax credits are an incentive to adopt state exchanges. You can read more about that here, in footnote 136. Thanks to InstaPundit commenters R.C. Dean, and ThomasD for pointing this out in the comments to WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE — ME, OR YOUR LYING EARS? Gruber: My 2012 remarks were “a speak-o — you know, like a typo.”

Unfortunately for Gruber, he said the same thing elsewhere. He's lying and it is obvious.

And Kimberly Strassel of The Wall Street Journal has uncovered even more damning evidence that politics took control when the IRS (the fully weaponinzed, poltiicized IRS!) started writing regulations to implement the subsidies, following the bill’s passage:

Democrats needed those subsidies. The party had assumed that dangling subsidies before the states would induce them to set up exchanges. When dozens instead refused, the White House was faced with the prospect that citizens in 36 states—two-thirds of the country—would be exposed to the full cost of ObamaCare's overpriced insurance. The backlash would have been horrific, potentially forcing Democrats to reopen the law, or even costing President Obama re-election.

The White House viewed it as imperative, therefore, that IRS bureaucrats ignore the law's text and come up with a politically helpful rule. The evidence shows that career officials at the IRS did indeed do as Treasury Department and Health and Human Services Department officials told them. This, despite the fact that the IRS is supposed to be insulated from political meddling.

We know this thanks to a largely overlooked joint investigation and February report by the House Oversight and Ways and Means committees into the history of the IRS subsidy rule. We know that in the late summer of 2010, after ObamaCare was signed into law, the IRS assembled a working group—made up of career IRS and Treasury employees—to develop regulations around ObamaCare subsidies. And we know that this working group initially decided to follow the text of the law. An early draft of its rule about subsidies explained that they were for "Exchanges established by the State."

Yet in March 2011, Emily McMahon, the acting assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department (a political hire), saw a news article that noted a growing legal focus on the meaning of that text. She forwarded it to the working group, which in turn decided to elevate the issue—according to Congress's report—to "senior IRS and Treasury officials." The office of the IRS chief counsel—one of two positions appointed by the president—drafted a memo telling the group that it should read the text to mean that everyone, in every exchange, got subsidies. At some point between March 10 and March 15, 2011, the reference to "Exchanges established by the State" disappeared from the draft rule.

Emails viewed by congressional investigators nonetheless showed that Treasury and the IRS remained worried they were breaking the law. An email exchange between Treasury employees in the spring of 2011 expressed concern that they had no statutory authority to deem a federally run exchange the equivalent of a state-run exchange.

Yet rather than engage in a basic legal analysis—a core duty of an agency charged with tax laws—the IRS instead set about obtaining cover for its predetermined political goal. A March 27, 2011, email has IRS employees asking HHS political hires to cover the tax agency's backside by issuing its own rule deeming HHS-run exchanges to be state-run exchanges. HHS did so in July 2011. One month later the IRS rushed out its own rule—providing subsidies for all.

This pretty much destroys the contentions that the explicit language was anything other than deliberate. It was not typo, it was not an error, it was an incentive that didn’t work as intended.

At the appellate level, these facts can be introduced via the filing of briefs in the case. Plus, judges (and justices) do read the newspapers (and websites).

Glenn Reynolds sums it up:

…they rammed it through on a party-line vote using a budget-reconciliation technicality, then they did an “I won” victory dance. Now it turns out the bill sucks and they’re blaming Republicans for not stopping them.
http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/obamacares_emhalbigem_trap.html