EDITORIAL: Who’s stupid now?

The political establishment doesn’t think much of the electorate’s collective intelligence. Campaign TV ads prove as much.

But the contempt of American voters expressed by economist and consultant Jonathan Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor regarded as the architect of the Affordable Care Act, says more about Obamacare and insider policymakers than it does about common citizens.

Just after Election Day, the Daily Caller unearthed video footage of Mr. Gruber, while participating in a 2013 panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania, explaining that the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers knew what was best for Americans, but that citizens weren’t smart enough to understand and support the policy virtues of the Affordable Care Act. Therefore, to pass Obamacare, Mr. Gruber said the administration and Democrats could not be open with Americans.

“If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed. … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Mr. Gruber said. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Mr. Gruber’s remarks validate every bit of criticism that Republican lawmakers and free-market economists leveled against Obamacare. They warned that the Affordable Care Act would increase health insurance costs for most Americans, not cut them. They warned that Obamacare, far from allowing Americans to keep their existing plans and doctors, would wipe out the policies of millions of Americans and force them to find new providers. They warned that Obamacare was a massive transfer of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and sick.

To this day, it’s lost on Mr. Gruber that Obamacare was terrible policy from the start. American opposition to Obamacare was not rooted in stupidity — it was rooted in reality. And the law remains deeply unpopular with Americans today precisely because they were lied to.

It’s instructive that since his comments were made public, Mr. Gruber has tried to walk back his insulting language, and that the University of Pennsylvania pulled the video of his remarks — but not before it was grabbed and made available on other websites. If Mr. Gruber’s remarks were appropriate, and his ideas of good governance were acceptable, he wouldn’t need to apologize and the university wouldn’t have tried to cover up his comments.

Far from being stupid, voters have shown time and again that they’re unafraid of correcting their mistakes. Since Obamacare’s passage, 28 Democratic senators who voted for Obamacare have been voted out of office or retired rather than face certain election defeat.

You know what’s really stupid? Defending a law passed through sheer arrogance and brazen dishonesty. The incoming Republican Congress has a mandate to roll back Obamacare. Mr. Gruber’s comments have ensured that the GOP will enjoy — how did he phrase it? — a “huge political advantage” in doing so.