Jonathan Gruber was not the 'architect' of ObamaCare

Jonathan Gruber was not the &#039;architect&#039; of ObamaCare

last updated 8 January 2015

Conservatives in recent days have seized upon comments by Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT who worked as a consultant on the Affordable Care Act and its predecessor in Massachusetts (ObamaCare and RomneyCare, respectively), to make the case that the Obama administration deceived the American people about the law. In a video that has been widely disseminated by the conservative media, Gruber is seen telling an audience that the "stupidity of the American voter" and a "lack of transparency" helped get the law passed.

Leaving the debates about ObamaCare and its passage aside, there is one aspect of this controversy we can clear up right now: Gruber was not the "architect" of ObamaCare, as so many conservative media outlets claim. He was, as this Politico article points out, one of "hundreds of people [who] were involved in the law's drafting." The word "architect," in contrast, suggests an insidious, all-powerful force pulling the strings from above, like that guy from The Matrix, which serves to create the impression that ObamaCare was some kind of conspiracy surreptitiously foisted on the public.