The result is perverse: in recent days, Gruber's comments are getting more attention than
testimony from the Democratic and Republican congressional aides who wrote the bill. They're getting more attention than what the Congressional Budget Office (which Gruber advised)
was told by Congress. They're getting more attention than the recollections of the very best reporters who covered Obamacare — notably
Sarah Kliff and
Julie Rovner. They're getting more attention than the
debate in every state that chose to use a federal exchange. They're getting more attention than the way the Obama administration
understood (and implemented) the law. They're getting more attention than the way the Supreme Court
interpreted the law in 2012.
They're getting more attention, in fact, than everything else Gruber has ever said or written about the law. This is a guy who cared so deeply about Obamacare's success that he literally published a
comic book about it. His most important contribution to the Obamacare debate — technical simulations used by HHS that modeled how many people would get insurance under different scenarios — always assumed subsidies reached into every state. No journalist who interviewed Gruber (myself included) ever heard him mention that states that don't set up exchanges don't receive subsidies. He himself
says he never believed that and the off-the-cuff comments were "speak-os".
This is like uncovering tape of Michael Bay saying there's nothing he hates seeing more in a movie than an explosion. It requires us to throw out pretty much everything Gruber has done publicly and instead believe that he thought dozens of states would be implementing Obamacare without subsidies — a nightmare of a policy outcome that would have given him a nervous breakdown — but the only times he ever mentioned it were at two Q&A sessions in 2012.