Obamacare Architect On Revealed Video: ‘It Was Just A Mistake’

FILE - In this May 12, 2009, file photo Jonathan Gruber, professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, participates in a Capitol Hill hearing on the overhaul of the heath care system in Washing... FILE - In this May 12, 2009, file photo Jonathan Gruber, professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, participates in a Capitol Hill hearing on the overhaul of the heath care system in Washington. A supporter of the Affordable Care Act, Gruber says, "It’s so crazy to think that a society that has Social Security and Medicare would not find this (law) constitutional.” Gruber advised both the Obama administration and Massachusetts lawmakers as they developed the state mandate in the 2006 law that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney championed as governor. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber said Friday that his comments that appeared to endorse the view that Obamacare’s tax credits would not be available through HealthCare.gov were “just a mistake.”

“I honestly don’t remember why I said that,” he told The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn. “I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake.”

An online video surfaced late Thursday of Gruber speaking in 2012. In the video, when asked about Obamacare’s insurance exchanges, he appeared to say that the tax credits would not be available in states that used the federal website instead of setting up their own exchanges.

“At this time, there was also substantial uncertainty about whether the federal backstop would be ready on time for 2014,” Gruber told Cohn. “I might have been thinking that if the federal backstop wasn’t ready by 2014, and states hadn’t set up their own exchange, there was a risk that citizens couldn’t get the tax credits right away.”

Gruber noted that his own analysis assumed subsidies would be available in every state. He added that it was “never contemplated by anybody who modeled or worked on this law that availability of subsides would be conditional of who ran the exchanges.”

“There was never any intention to literally withhold money, to withhold tax credits, from the states that didn’t take that step,” Gruber said. “That’s clear in the intent of the law and if you talk to anybody who worked on the law. My subsequent statement was just a speak-o—you know, like a typo.”

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: