This issue has been making the rounds on social media, but finally hit the mainstream media yesterday.
The relevant quotes from ObamaCare advisor Jonathan Gruber include:
This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the 'stupidity of the American voter' or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass... In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which explicitly said that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed... You can't do it politically, you just literally cannot do it. It's not only transparent financing but also transparent spending.Gruber subsequently apologized on MSNBC, saying that he "spoke inappropriately".
To me, it sounds an awful lot like, "I wish I hadn't said those things now that everyone knows I said them."
