For critics, the latest arguments are just another ACA bait-and-switch. First there was Obama’s promise that everyone would be allowed to keep their current doctors. Then there was assurance that costs would fall and that this would not be a tax. Then, after passage, Gruber said that (in direct contradiction of arguments before the court) there was a knowing effort to punish states which did not yield to the ACA and that they passed the ACA only by engineering a “lack of transparency” on the details and relying on “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Gruber is now back assuring those same American voters that the individual mandate really is not that important after all. In an interview on CNN, Gruber insisted “Well look, I think when the law passed we all thought the mandate was a very important part of the law. We have now basically been proven that it’s important but not as important as we thought.” The question is whether John Roberts will show the same flexibility.
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