ObamaCare Architect: Being Healthy Discriminates Against the Unhealthy

Forget White Privilege. Try some Health Privilege for a change.

In a strange bygone era, you went to a doctor when you got sick, then you paid the doctor. But this unfairly allowed more healthy people to spend less money on doctors than less healthy people.

And what right did healthy people who were part of some sort of healthy genetic master race have to spend less money on health care?

They didn’t. So Obama fixed that. Punishing the healthy for their health and creating a new fairer society where everyone pays more for health care, but they all pay the same amount.

Jonathan Gruber, Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research named “One of the Top 3 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time” by Slate Magazine. And a guy who took around $300k from the government while promoting ObamaCare.

And here’s some of his innovative and practical thinking on display.

JONATHAN GRUBER, M.I.T.: Let’s start with understanding that we’re not talking about the vast majority of Americans. This law is really leaving those with employer insurance, those with government insurance alone. We’re talking about a small minority of Americans that buy insurance on their own through the individual market.

CHUCK TODD: Still millions of people.

GRUBER: Exactly. It’s 12 million people, about a third of which will end up paying more under this law. And that as you said in the introductions sort of the idea. We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.

The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return.

Socialism? Nah, no Socialism to see here.

You would have to be some kind of crazy Sarah Palin person to think that setting up nationalized health care to combat Health Privilege in which you pay more for health care that you don’t need is a Socialist idea.

  • Veracious_one

    one Obama goal is to bleed Americans dry by bankrupting them….

  • glpage

    I’ve been wondering if the supposed leftist geniuses were in fact geniuses or if they just had a mass of warm air between their ears. I’m pretty sure all the actions of the folks in Obama’s administration and Mr. Gruber have given me the answer.

    • ashlandalso

      Obama has cherry picked the dregs of humanity to carry forth a twisted demonic agenda straight out of hell. Nearly every ill that America has is a result of political corruption. Todays leaders are chosen not by a history of achievement but by a beauty contest and who is the most convincing liar that promises the most stuff to the willfully ignorant and selfish ” what is in it for me” crowd. Neither party is without blame. I place more on the dems because they advocate and cultivate grave almost demonic behavior to gain advantage against their advasarys. Right, wrong, moral or immoral has no bearing. Ben Franklin said our constituation was written for a just and moral people. Are we that any longer? Some, but decreasing daily. I can not escape the feeling that if something is not done soon America will find its self on the dung heap of history. It was such a wonderful attempt at self rule.

    • tagalog

      – and they call US “the stupid party.”

    • pupsncats

      Its amazing you ever doubted it.

      • glpage

        Oh, sometimes I get a bit magnanimous and try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Leftists are making that very difficult, I can tolerate stupid for only so long.

  • onecornpone

    Let’s start with understanding that we’re not talking about the vast majority of Americans.

    Notice the psychological mechanism intended to offer the majority who read his words a sense of relief for having escaped the rigors of entrepreneurial risk?

    12 million people, out of 330 million seems trivial, but then the M.I.T. statist proponent further diminishes the concern of the average reader by dividing the 12 million by 3.

    Oh! Well… only 4 million will suffer at the hands of our tyrannical regime’s new policy?

    Sadly, most folks are willing to sacrifice 4 million of 330 million, as long as the condemned aren’t anyone they know well.

    Therein we find their Achilles Heel. In the Information Age, those 4 million are no longer ANONYMOUS UNKNOWNS. They don’t have to be INVISIBLE.

    Time to raise a ruckus!

    • tagalog

      Yes, the “politicals” who wound up zeks in the gulag were not the vast majority of Soviet citizens.

      So it was OK.

    • pupsncats

      A very astute observation.

      • onecornpone

        No one should ever entertain the idea that these cretins aren’t master manipulators, well versed in the art of public relations.

        • pupsncats

          Don’t you mean well versed in Alinsky-tactics and working from the little Red Book and the Communist Manifesto?

  • ReasonOverStupidity

    Where does the left come up with this insane garbage!?

  • Habbgun

    Doesn’t Gruber realize that us genetic lottery losers don’t want his health insurance premiums. We want Gruber’s money! The whole middle man thing is a Republican obstruction.

  • Biff Henderson

    So some gluttonous sloth that has gorged themselves into a diabetic coma is a victim? Interesting take I must say.

  • DogmaelJones1

    Socialism — aka Progressivism — will always find a new “class” to victimize and another class to “privilege” by punishing the other “class,” in this instance, people who have paid less for their insurance because they really didn’t need to use it.

    • pupsncats

      Sums it up quite nicley.

  • Gee

    The figures I heard is that over 100 million Americans are losing their plans and over 66% will be paying more. The leftists are still lying

  • objectivefactsmatter

    So now the government is telling us it doesn’t matter what we eat, drink, inhale and so forth? No need to exercise? Or are they saying that they’ll be “structuring” that for us soon as well, to make everything “fair?”

  • objectivefactsmatter

    Every problem that they claim to fix creates cascading new problems. Which they then claim need fixing. The snowball of socialism in the USA is gaining inertia and it’s getting very dangerous too.

  • ted

    “That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination”

    Jonathan Gruber is a liar and stupid.

    There is no discrimination in the common usage of the word.

    It is simply using statistical/actuarial facts to determine what premiums need to be paid by customers to pay the unfortunate percentage that have “accidents” that are covered under the contracted policy, the money they are owed under the policy, and make a 5 to 10% profit for the insurance company.

    That is it.

    Mr Gruber is lying about risk. Some people have a hobby of mountain climbing while other take up bowling. Should bowlers pay higher premiums to cover the risk taken on by mountain climbers? Using his logic we should.

    Should nonsmokers pay the same premium as smokers?

    The list if such examples are endless.

    • pupsncats

      To answer your questions, under the mantra of Socialism (all are equal but some are more equal than others),of course those who take the least risks should pay the same price as those who take more risks. That is what “equality” is.

  • ted

    “In January 2010, after news emerged that Gruber was under a $297,000 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services, while at the same time promoting the Obama administration’s health care reform policies, many suggested a conflict of interest.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Gruber_(economist)

    Reasd the wiki entry.

    This guy has never worked a day in his life outside academia or government. He is the son of a professor.

  • tagalog

    “…the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return.”

    How is a person who doesn’t get sick or injured as much as others “paying an artificially low price?” Isn’t that person paying the appropriate price for his health care? What’s artificial about the price they pay?

    And if 1/3 of Americans will end up paying more for health care insurance, how does that number, approximately 4,000,000, match up against the number of people who sign up for Obamacare?

  • Infidel

    This leftist sociopath is quoting John Rawls without giving him credit. Rawls advocated radical egalitarianism. Pol Pot put his theory in practice the only way it can be.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice

    • pupsncats

      The principle of totalitarianism never changes; only the methods and the people.

  • henrymart81

    Survival of the fittest. I don’t care if you get sick and die.

  • Boots

    So I’m a genetic winner because I work out almost every day and don’t smoke? Of course Dr Gruber MIT thinks I’m a genetic winner because I’ve got more personal pride than to be a ward of the state through trained dependency and make reasonable lifestyle choices. Just like all liberals his solution is to punish the successful because it’s “fair”.

  • pupsncats

    This is the spin now. Government gets to decide for us all what is best for us. If you

    bought health insurance on your own, not only were you getting a crummy policy because you might not be paying for contraceptives and maternity care (required for all health insurance plans under Obamacare) as a male, but you had an unfair advantage over others and the government can no longer allow any of us to decide for ourselves what we need or want.

    In reality, Obamacare discriminates against the healthy in favor of the sick by forcing the healthy out of low-premium policies that covered only that which the individual believed was what he/she needed into “comprehensive” policies with corresponding higher premiums in order to force people to share the costs of sick people.

    Social engineering, Socialism, and totalitarianism are the true goals of Obamacare.

    An article in Bloomberg Businessweek (Nov. 11-17) sums it up nicely:

    “What’s mostly been lost in the well-documented outrage over the cancellations is that they’re a feature of the Affordable Care Act, not a bug. Some policies will no longer be available because the law is doing just what it is meant to do: create an insurance market where Americans more broadly share the cost of getting sick.”

    “Yes, some people will have to pay more, but they were paying an artificially low amount,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown Health Policy Institute. “They were benefitting from a system that discriminated against people with pre-existing conditions.”

    “To DISMANTLE THE SYSTEM the law set new rules.”

    “In the past (prior to Obamacare), people who bought health plans on their own, rather than through an employer, could lower their premiums by choosing more limited coverage. Now that all policies must provide comprehensive coverage-spreading risk among the young and healthy and the sick-people who’d bought stripped-down plans ON THE CHEAP (my emphasis) are seeing their premiums go up.”

    “HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius conceded in March that changing the underwriting rules MIGHT (my emphasis) raise prices for some: “These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, so there MAY BE (my emphasis) higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she told reporters.”

    ‘That’s the price of covering 14 million uninsured people next year and requiring plans to meet a minimum standard.”

  • pupsncats

    Obamacare now discriminates against healthy people, forcing them to pay an even higher percentage of their income to support those who are sick. But this is the right kind of discrimination according to the Progressives who, in order to make everyone the same, those who are responsible or work to be healthy, or fortunate to have good genes, will pay a higher price to subsidize those who are not.

    Basic Socialism at work here.

    An article in Bloomberg Businessweek (Nov 11-17) sums it up nicely:

    “What’s mostly been lost in the well-documented outrage over the cancellations is that they’re a feature of the Affordable Care Act, not a bug. Some policies will no longer be available because the law is doing just what it was meant to do: create an insurance market where Americans more broadly share the cost of getting sick. ”

    “Yes, come people will have to pay more, but they were paying an artificially low amount,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown Health Policy Institute. “They were benefitting from a system that discriminated against people with pre-existing conditions.”

    In other words, if you purchased an individual health insurance plan, you were paying an ARTIFICIALLY LOW amount because you may have had a choice to limit coverage in order to have a lower premium. That’s just NOT FAIR! Now, you are going to have to pay for coverage for contraceptives and maternity care even if you are a male (one of the requirements in all health insurance plans).

    The ACA was designed as a social engineering, wealth redistribution, expansion of big government with broader control over our lives.

  • pupsncats

    BREAKING NEWS!

    House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid just left a meeting with President Obama which they told reporters was a plan to dismantle the automobile insurance system.

    According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek (Nov 11-17), entitled “Canceling Policies Was Built Into Obamacare”, it was stated that “To dismantle that system (where individuals could purchase health insurance plans and choose their coverage thus allowing them to have low premiums), the law sets new rules for health plans sold after 2013″ because “they were paying artificially low amounts” and the ACA created an insurance market where Americans more broadly share the cost of getting sick.”

    Mrs. Pelosi stated: “The automobile insurance system is as unfair as the prior health care insurance system in that it allowed individuals to obtain policies that allowed them to receive insurance rates for driving safely and responsibly. That is unfair to those who don’t, so our plan is to create another automobile insurance system like the ACA where Americans more broadly share the cost of automobile accidents.”

  • pupsncats

    Nearly every ill in America is a result of the loss of moral and ethical standards, common sense, and the truth that there is both right and wrong and evil, which has allowed the corruption of not only the political system, but business, the media, the courts, the educational system, and every other institution because after all, it is the person who is the politician, the businessman, the reporter/journalist, the judge, and the teacher.