By TPNN
However, before Gruber was President Obama’s headache, he was Mitt Romney’s. As Gov. Romney mounted an unsuccessful bid for the highest office, the Obama Team peppered the media with claims that Gruber had helped design “Romneycare,” a statewide universal healthcare platform approved in Massachusetts on Romney’s watch.
More importantly, it was accurate. Mitt Romney did oversee the implementation of universal healthcare on a statewide level in Massachusetts. Of course, such a program is far different from a national policy that drags the U.S. economy down, but the point remains: Gruber has been helping design socialized healthcare for states and the U.S.
Before he was causing problems for the Obama administration, the Obama team was using Gruber to unsettle Mitt Romney. In the 2012 campaign, Obama’s camp was claiming that the Massachusetts health care plan was the intellectual model for Obamacare, just as Romney was trying to disavow it. Gruber was essential to this case.
In a video produced by the Obama campaign celebrating the anniversary of “Romneycare,” Gruber says, “I helped Gov. Romney develop his health care reform or Romneycare, before going down to Washington to help President Obama develop his national version of that law.” The spot includes old footage of Romney thanking Gruber for his work on the Massachusetts health bill. “The core of the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare and what we did in Massachusetts are identical,” Gruber says.The MIT professor was such an important part of the creation of Obamacare that his association with Romney’s effort proved the link between the two programs. If that involvement in Obamacare was sufficient to condemn Romney in 2012, it’s sufficient enough for Republicans to raise it now over Gruber’s claims about the Affordable Care Act. What’s Gruber for the goose, is Gruber for the gander.
Another clip of Jonathon Gruber explaining his role in Obamacare can be seen here.
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