Rep. Cynthia Lummis says she bared the painful story of her husband's death after his nightmare with the Affordable Care Act because she couldn't stomach Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber's phony apology for trashing the healthcare law.
"I had sat for a couple of hours listening to Jonathan Gruber give this tortured, canned, memorized semi-apology for his earlier multiple statements about the stupidity of the American people and … the way that Americans were duped," Lummis said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"He comes before Congress and says, well I was glib and I was trying to build myself up by tearing other people down. When he gave that same statement over and over and over it was so canned and so memorized and so insincere, that I just had had enough."
Gruber, an MIT economist who helped formulate President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday to answer questions about his recent denouncement of Obamacare.
Among other things, he claimed the "stupidity of the American voter" helped get the law passed.
Gruber made a groveling apology for his remarks, calling them "mean and insulting" and attempted to retract some of them.
But Lummis — a Wyoming Republican and member of the committee — wasn't buying it. She told Gruber to "get over your damned glibness," because it had "direct consequences for real American people."
She also said her husband Alvin, who at 65 died in his sleep of a massive heart attack on Oct. 24, had been caught in confusion over whether or not they had healthcare insurance through Obamacare.
That time period, she said, coincided with when her husband was having medical tests conducted. She said it was recommended he have a test to reveal whether an artery on the backside of his heart was clogged, a determination difficult to make with just a chest X-ray. He didn't get the additional test, possibly said Lummis, because he was "discouraged" by the confusion with his Obamacare policy.
Lummis told Steve Malzberg that Americans are starting to understand the disadvantages of the Affordable Care Act.
The fact that the people who contrived Obamacare were trying to get it scored by the Congressional Budget Office as not being a tax and then took it to the Supreme Court and alleged it was a tax so it would be determined to be constitutional … not only was a political slight of hand, but it was a political slight of hand by design," she said.
"And Jonathan Gruber was simply arrogant enough to be the person who bragged openly about how duped the American people were because of our own stupidity and because of our lack of understanding of basic economics.
"Well, if that's how Obamacare came to be adopted, shame on everyone who voted for it."
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