In this PBS NewsHour video (embedded below) on the high cost of health care in Massachusetts, MIT’s Jonathan Gruber and fellow MIT colleague Jean Yang, executive director of Massachusetts Health Connector, the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange, give an “all systems go” for the October 1, 2013 rollout.

Gruber first tutors PBS's Paul Solman on Connector, a system he helped craft for Romneycare, then takes us inside his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, which he "shares with more than a few feathered friends."  The architect of Obamacare points out that his snuggly pet cockatoo Phoebe "will live to be about a hundred years old."  Gruber loves birds.  So does his wife Andrea, who sits on the board of Foster Parrots, Ltd., a non-profit dedicated to the protection of "unwanted and unadoptable" parrots.

Under Obamacare, the bird will fare much better than human beings.  In another segment, Dr. Richard Dupee, chief of geriatrics at Tufts Medical Center, gives us the real bird's-eye view of Romney care – a  plan Gruber himself acknowledged was the " same f***ing bill" as Obamacare.

After Gruber says the exchanges will help to put the uninsured on the rolls, Dupee asks, "Who's going to take care of these patients?"  The specialist says that not only have costs gone up since Romneycare was passed, but there are longer wait times, an increase in emergency room visits, and a shortage of doctors willing to accept lowered reimbursement rates.  Gruber spins the physician's realistic look at the consequences of universal coverage by calling for a "social contract" between the government and private entities to lower health care costs.

A year after economics correspondent Solman profiled the Massachusetts model on PBS,  Gruber had to admit that "we didn't do a great job last year."  The Connector website was a disaster and cost the state nearly one billion dollars.  Gruber, caught in a PR nightmare with more and more damaging videos surfacing every day, implored insurance buyers at a Connector meeting last week to "give us another chance.”

Read more Evans at exzoom.net.