Lanhee J Chen, Columnist

Liberal Arrogance at the Core of Obamacare

Jonathan Gruber said voters were too dumb to understand what was good for them. That arrogance is the basis of Obamacare.

November 14, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC

By Lanhee J Chen

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches public policy at Stanford University. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Chen was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. He practiced business litigation with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and served as the Winnie Neubauer visiting fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. Chen earned his doctorate and master's degree in political science from Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard College.

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Photographer: Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images

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Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has gotten in trouble for remarks that applaud -- in the words of Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Jose DelReal -- “the deliberatively deceptive way” the health-care law was written to get it passed in Congress.

Gruber's comments, made over the last several years, reveal a disdain for the American voter (whom he described as stupid) and for people's ability to understand the policy discussions that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and his fellow liberal wonks engaged in when they crafted the Affordable Care Act.