| | | No, it's based on fact. That is actually what happened with Obummercare.
Gruber and Fowler wrote it.
Key architect of Obamacare admitted that it was passed by exploiting political ignorance
By Ilya Somin November 11, 2014
At an October 2013 panel, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of the Affordable Care Act, admitted that it was passed by exploiting political ignorance. If voters had known that the law would work by forcing young and healthy people to provide massive new subsidies for the old and sick, he doubts that it could have gotten through Congress:
“[Economist] Mark [Pauly] made a couple of comments that I do want to take issue with, one about transparency in financing and the other is about moving from community rating to risk-rated subsidies. You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing…and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
What Gruber called “stupidity” is better described as ignorance. Even highly intelligent voters have strong incentives to be rationally ignorant about complex political issues.
This is far from the only deception that played a major role in the passage of Obamacare. Perhaps even more important was President Obama’s now-notorious lie to the effect that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
In both cases, people who studied the plan carefully could readily tell that the administration’s statements were deceptive. Forcing millions of people to buy more comprehensive and more expensive health insurance plans than they had previously was an important element of the ACA – a feature, not a bug. This was well understood by health care experts on both of sides of the debate over the law, and seized on by opponents early on. But a majority of the public is often ignorant about even simple aspects of the political system, such as which party controls which house of Congress. The problem of political ignorance is exacerbated by the enormous size and complexity of modern government, which makes it difficult for even relatively attentive voters to keep track of more than a small fraction of what the state is doing. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the administration’s deceptions about Obamacare fooled enough people to ensure its passage.
It would be a mistake to assume that such exploitation of political ignorance is unique to the Obama administration or to Democrats generally. Conservative Republican politicians and interest groups also often exploit ignorance. Indeed, neither party can afford to abjure this vital political tool. A candidate or party unwilling to manipulate voter ignorance labors at a systematic disadvantage relative to more unscrupulous opponents. Things would be different if voters carefully kept track of political leaders’ claims and punished those who use deception to exploit “the stupidity of the American voter.” But if the public were that well informed about the exploitation of ignorance, there would not be so much ignorance to exploit in the first place.
The underlying problem is not that one party is uniquely unscrupulous, but that both must operate under a structure of incentives created by an electorate that itself has a strong incentive to be ignorant. If we want to change that sad state of affairs, we should consider making more of our decisions in a framework where the incentives are better.
UPDATE: Gruber now says that his 2013 statement was “inappropriate.” Perhaps so. But notice that he does not say it was inaccurate.
UPDATE #2: This post attempts to use my statement that both parties exploit political ignorance as a kind of excuse for the Obama administration’s actions. But the fact that both parties do it does not actually justify either. It merely means that we cannot address the problem by replacing the Democrats with the Republicans or vice versa. The problem is structural and requires a structural fix, such as reducing the size, scope, and complexity of government.
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theguardian.com
Obamacare architect leaves White House for pharmaceutical industry job Glenn Greenwald
Few people embody the corporatist revolving door greasing Washington as purely as Elizabeth Fowler
Former WellPoint VP Elizabeth Fowler sits behind her boss, Sen. Max Baucus, as he announces in 2009 that the health care bill will have no public option. Photograph: screen grab, Bill Moyers' Journal
Wed 5 Dec ‘12 05.51 EST First published on Wed 5 Dec ‘12 05.51 EST
When the legislation that became known as "Obamacare" was first drafted, the key legislator was the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, whose committee took the lead in drafting the legislation. As Baucus himself repeatedly boasted, the architect of that legislation was Elizabeth Folwer, his chief health policy counsel; indeed, as Marcy Wheeler discovered, it was Fowler who actually drafted it. As Politico put it at the time: "If you drew an organizational chart of major players in the Senate health care negotiations, Fowler would be the chief operating officer."
What was most amazing about all of that was that, before joining Baucus' office as the point person for the health care bill, Fowler was the Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs (i.e. informal lobbying) at WellPoint, the nation's largest health insurance provider (before going to WellPoint, as well as after, Fowler had worked as Baucus' top health care aide). And when that health care bill was drafted, the person whom Fowler replaced as chief health counsel in Baucus' office, Michelle Easton, was lobbying for WellPoint as a principal at Tarplin, Downs, and Young.
Whatever one's views on Obamacare were and are: the bill's mandate that everyone purchase the products of the private health insurance industry, unaccompanied by any public alternative, was a huge gift to that industry; as Wheeler wrote at the time: "to the extent that Liz Fowler is the author of this document, we might as well consider WellPoint its author as well." Watch the five-minute Bill Moyers report from 2009, embedded below, on the key role played in all of this by Liz Fowler and the "revolving door" between the health insurance/lobbying industry and government officials at the time this bill was written and passed.
More amazingly still, when the Obama White House needed someone to oversee implementation of Obamacare after the bill passed, it chose . . . Liz Fowler. That the White House would put a former health insurance industry executive in charge of implementation of its new massive health care law was roundly condemned by good government groups as at least a violation of the "spirit" of governing ethics rules and even "gross", but those objections were, of course, brushed aside by the White House. She then became Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy at the National Economic Council.
Now, as Politico's "Influence" column briefly noted on Tuesday, Fowler is once again passing through the deeply corrupting revolving door as she leaves the Obama administration to return to the loving and lucrative arms of the private health care industry:
"Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading 'global health policy' at Johnson & Johnson's government affairs and policy group."
The pharmaceutical giant that just hired Fowler actively supported the passage of Obamacare through its membership in the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby. Indeed, PhRMA was one of the most aggressive supporters - and most lavish beneficiaries - of the health care bill drafted by Fowler. Mother Jones' James Ridgeway proclaimed "Big Pharma" the "big winner" in the health care bill. And now, Fowler will receive ample rewards from that same industry as she peddles her influence in government and exploits her experience with its inner workings to work on that industry's behalf, all of which has been made perfectly legal by the same insular, Versailles-like Washington culture that so lavishly benefits from all of this.
It's difficult to find someone who embodies the sleazy, anti-democratic, corporatist revolving door that greases Washington as shamelessly and purely as Liz Fowler. One of the few competitors I can think of is Adm. Michael McConnell, who parlayed his military and intelligence career into a lucrative gig at Booz Allen, one of the nation's largest private intelligence contractors; then became George W Bush's Director of National Intelligence (where he spearheaded a huge gift to the telecom industry - retroactive immunity shielding it from all accountability for its participation in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program - as well as continued his Booz Allen work of privatizing intelligence and surveillance functions); then returned to the loving arms of Booz Allen, where he now exploits his national security credentials on behalf of industry interests (by, for instance, spearheading the fear-mongering campaign about cyber-warfare in order to advocate for security programs that would amply enrich Booz Allen's clients).
This is precisely the behavior which, quite rationally, makes the citizenry so jaded about Washington. It's what ensures that the interests of the same permanent power factions are served regardless of election outcomes. It's what makes a complete mockery out of claims of democracy. And it's what demonstrates that corporatism and oligarchy are the dominant forms of government in the US:
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