MIT Professor Behind Obamacare Calls Trump’s Policies a ‘Garbage Salad’
Photo via AP
Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who was an architect of Massachusetts’ 2006 healthcare overhaul and the Affordable Care Act, has lambasted Donald Trump after he was mentioned in Sunday’s second presidential debate.
Trump invoked the Romneycare and Obamacare mastermind to argue that the latter was a scam.
“You know that, because Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, was said—he said it was a great lie, it was a big lie,” Trump said. “President Obama said you keep your doctor, you keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud, and it doesn’t work.”
As per usual, the Republican presidential nominee’s grasp of the facts is a tenuous one. While Gruber never called the ACA a lie, he was recorded in November 2014 saying that it only passed for the “the stupidity of the American voters.” Gruber has since apologized for his remarks and testified before Congress.
“My only comment is that last night showed the difference between a candidate with a strong and coherent health care agenda (Clinton),” Gruber told the Boston Business Journal in an email Monday, “and one with a garbage salad of right wing talking points (Trump).”
In February 2015, shortly after taking office, Gov. Charlie Baker demanded and received resignations from Gruber and three others on the board of the state’s Health Connector insurance marketplace.
“As with all incoming administrations, I am establishing a new leadership team and I have instructed those individuals to take a fresh look at the Connector and to implement ideas to improve the operation of that important state entity,” Baker said at the time.
