For several years the nation has been divided, often Republican versus Democrat, about the controversial health care overhaul known as ObamaCare.

The law's  advocates were sure that passing such a law would help those most negatively affected by the current healthcare system. Those who opposed it were (and are) of the mind that creating a more bureaucratic system to try and fix a healthcare system that is largely bureaucratic is only going to create a bigger problem than we already have.

Now, most of us have our opinions of the law, but I want to clarify that the law itself is only a prop in this blog.

What I do want to concentrate on is a particular quote made by Jonathan Gruber.

First, we need to introduce Mr. Gruber. Gruber is an MIT professor of economics. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics. Gruber is also interested in healthcare and is an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics. Why the concern with some quote from some guy who teaches in a land far away and is involved in the dismal science?  Well, it’s because he is also known as “The Architect” for both the RomneyCare and ObamaCare healthcare overhauls.

In a recent forum on healthcare and economics hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Gruber made the following statement about ObamaCare:

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in -- you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

Let’s look at a few pieces of what he said. First, we have the statement saying the government intentionally worded the law we know as ObamaCare in a way the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) would not score the penalties for not having healthcare as a tax. So it gets by the CBO as not being a tax… but then, after the law is passed and “we see what’s in it”, we find out that the “penalty” for not having health insurance is interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States as a tax protected by the Constitution.

Next, he openly admits that in order for the American people to buy this law, the creators of the law literally had to lie…  sorry -- have "an admitted lack of transparency". If the American people knew in no unclear terms that “healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”  So now we have clear admission the architects of ObamaCare have manipulated the CBO and the American people intentionally. So much for having the most transparent Presidential Administration we have ever experienced.

So, why do all this? Well, because they sincerely believe you and I are stupid -- literally, stupid. We are simply “stupid American voters” that need to be spoon-fed lies in order to buy in to the schemes they are determined to pursue. After all, in this case the lies were necessary and the deception was understandable because, in the words of Gruber himself, “he’d rather have this law than not.”

This is only one clear example of what our “leaders” think about us and our intellect; all you have to do is listen to what many of our elected officials say and compare it to how they vote. Either they think we’re stupid or they have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Sure, it’s concerning to me that this mindset is indicative of those who are supposed to be “representing” us. What is more concerning, though, is that we allow these things to go unanswered; we re-elect and nominate politicians who believe the Grubers of the world should formulate public policy.  What is most concerning is the answer to this question: if we have leaders who believe we are "stupid," and we continue to re-elect those same leaders, what are we?