Gruber discusses penalize States at Noblis – January 18, 2012

Obamacare was originally written to penalize states that did not establish a health exchange.

In case you didn’t believe that the Obama administration has no problem changing the law without approval from Congress, I point you to this interview. In it Gruber plainly explains that for States that do NOT set up an exchange they will NOT get a subsidy – the law was intended to penalize states that were not on board with the program. This is exactly opposite of what the Obama administration put into place AND opposite of what the government argued to the 2 federal courts.

A change to the law such as paying subsidies to federal exchange enrollees has to be created as a bill within Congress and then signed by the President. That is what the Constitution says. We need to stop allowing the Administration take liberties with the Constitution to appease their political goals. For those that cry out, “Impeach Obama!”, I want to assure you that this is not an impeachable offense.

Questioner: You mentioned the health-information Exchanges for the states, and it is my understanding that if states don’t provide them, then the federal government will provide them for the states.

Gruber: Yeah, so these health-insurance Exchanges, you can go on ma.healthconnector.org and see ours in Massachusetts, will be these new shopping places and they’ll be the place that people go to get their subsidies for health insurance. In the law, it says if the states don’t provide them, the federal backstop will. The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop, I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think what’s important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this.

Long video – skip ahead to 31 minutes. http://youtu.be/GtnEmPXEpr0?t=31m25s