Same Gruber Obama claims he hardly knew.
Via Daily Caller:
Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber convinced President Barack Obama to create the individual and employer mandates in the health care law, which Obama originally opposed as a presidential candidate.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, an obscure but influential left-wing group called the Herndon Alliance approached the campaigns of Obama and fellow Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to get all three major Democrats on board with health care reform. The candidates came up with differing plans. Of the three, Obama positioned himself as an opponent of mandates. […]
After Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, he added Gruber to his transition team. The New York Times later reported that Gruber became “Mr. Mandate” on the Obama health care reform team. Obama finally announced his support for the mandate in July 2009, the very same month that he met personally with Gruber in the Oval Office. Obama’s decision was made during a series of Obamacare-designing White House meetings, of which Gruber was present at five.
“It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance,” the Times reported in 2012, when Gruber was publicly hoping the Supreme Court would uphold the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which it eventually did.