Obamacare Architect: Employer Mandate ‘Doesn’t Do Much,’ ‘Wouldn’t Care’ If It Was Eliminated

During an interview on Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Radio’s “Alan Colmes Show,” MIT Economics Professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber argued that the law’s employer mandate “doesn’t do much” and eliminating it wouldn’t do “a whole lot of damage,” and he “wouldn’t care one way or another.”

Gruber stated that there isn’t anything to the right of Obamacare that would work, and that getting rid of state line restrictions on insurance wouldn’t do anything. He also argued that Obamacare has “unambiguously” made the world a better place.

When asked what could be done to make the law better, Gruber responded that it was “hard to know.” Gruber continued that there was nothing President-Elect Donald Trump would do that would make the law better, but there are things that “wouldn’t make it much worse.”

Gruber cited the employer mandate as something that “doesn’t do much, because it only applies to employers about 50 employees, and almost all of them offer health insurance anyway. So it doesn’t do a whole lot. He could get rid of that without doing a whole lot of damage, and that would be fine. … I wouldn’t care one way or another.”

He added that while it wouldn’t be a bad idea, it wouldn’t “kill the law” if the contraception mandate was eliminated.

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