Jonathan Gruber set off a firestorm of controversy, at least in the conservative media, with the recent revelation of his comments about the "stupidity of the American people," which allowed the Affordable Care Act to be passed. In essence, he admitted that the bill was written in a way that would allow its purveyors to characterize it as the cure-all and salvation for a healthcare system that was in trouble, with no danger of their deception being discovered by a trusting and naive populace.
He obviously never intended for his comments to make it into the public sphere and did not consider the fact that someone is always recording on their smartphone. What is truly disturbing is that our government willingly engages in the purposeful deception of the populace, in order to thrust its secretive agenda onto an unsuspecting people — and a sycophantic mainstream media.
As I have said many times before, Obamacare was never about healthcare — it was about government control and wealth redistribution. If there was real concern about the uninsured, it would have been much cheaper and considerably less complex to simply give all of the uninsured Cadillac health plans for life.
I am a firm believer that healthcare reform was — and is — needed. I have been advocating for it for several years. It needs to be done correctly, in a way that does not create different levels of access and treatment.
There is no question that the American people are distracted by sports and entertainment, and that we confer godlike status on actors and some athletes. There is also no question that we could do more to enhance our knowledge about important issues.
However, to assume that the American people are stupid and uncaring, and to design programs and speeches around that assumption is arrogant, disrespectful, and frankly, very shortsighted. As has famously been said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
This most recent revelation by the unmasking of one of the chief architects of Obamacare is far from the first and only indication of a pattern of deception and manipulation by the current administration. There appears to be overt contempt for the intelligence of the populace by people who would have us believe that the Benghazi disaster was caused by an ill-defined and little-watched video, and that there was not even a smidgen of evidence of wrongdoing surrounding the phony Internal Revenue Service scandal; that the government would never engage in spying on its own citizens without cause.
Unfortunately, the administration knows that it can say virtually anything, that there are some people who are so desperate to believe that it will be accepted as truth. They also know that many members of the mainstream media subscribe to their same ideology and will protect them, regardless of the consequences.
Only people who doubt the analytical ability of the populace would believe that giving people free phones and generous entitlements could purchase their loyalty forever. Only people who think the populace consists of morons would believe that they could keep delaying the employer mandate portion of Obamacare until after an important election;
that people would not realize they were being manipulated.
The recent election result indicates the resurgence of an informed populace in our nation. Even though the awakening is not complete, I believe Gruber may be proven wrong about the intellect of the American people.
Dr. Ben Carson is an emeritus professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and has been awarded more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of national merit citations. He has authored more than 100 neurosurgical publications and has written five best-selling books, including "America the Beautiful." For more on Dr. Carson, Click Here Now.