The news that the economist dubbed the “architect of Obamacare” was caught admitting that the program deliberately hid the cost from the American public is disappointing. It isn’t surprising.

Avik Roy of Forbes explains the story of the devastating admission by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber:

“New video surfaced in which Gruber said that 'the stupidity of the American voter' made it important for him and Democrats to hide Obamacare’s true costs from the public. 'That was really, really critical for the thing to pass,' said Gruber. 'But I’d rather have this law than not.' In other words, the ends—imposing Obamacare upon the public—justified the means.

"The new Gruber comments come from a panel discussion that he joined on October 17, 2013 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. He was joined on the panel by Penn health economist Mark Pauly. Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller was the first to flag Gruber’s remarks.”

This isn’t Gruber’s first embarrassing moment of candor about Obamacare. The law says that federal subsidies can only go to people living in states that set up their own government-run “exchanges,” and not to people in states, like Wisconsin, that instead rely on the federal exchange. Democrats claim this is a mistake or a misunderstanding of the law because it would throw a wrench in their plans to shift costs around. Gruber, however, was caught on video in 2012 saying that the law was supposed to do what Democrats now say it doesn’t do. He said it was a surreptitious way of forcing states to go along with the law.

Now, the new video shows him admitting another way Obamacare was trying to fool the public. The White House hurried to deny that what Gruber said was true, but this was the same White House that said if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor. Judge the latest denial accordingly.

Meanwhile, Forbes’ Roy points out that the so-called Affordable Care Act, which instituted Obamacare, really was too bad a deal to pass honestly:

"Gruber made an argument that many of Obamacare’s critics have long made, including me. It’s that the law’s complex system of insurance regulation is a way of concealing from voters what Obamacare really is: a huge redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy. In the video, Gruber points out that if Democrats had been honest about these facts, and that the law’s individual mandate is in effect a major tax hike, Obamacare would never have passed Congress.

“ 'Mark [Pauly] made a couple of comments that I do want to take issue with, one about transparency in financing and the other is about moving from community rating to risk-rated subsidies. You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing…and also transparent spending.' Gruber said. 'In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. 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.’ ”

And we do have the law. It is transferring costs — not just risk, as insurance would, but actual known costs — from some people to others. This makes health coverage costlier than it needs to be for many people. The scheme also involves taxes, mandates and regulations enough already to stifle innovation and push doctors toward leaving their profession. It has done nothing to make health care more affordable — Wisconsinites routinely tell me of health premiums rising by rates well into the double digits — and it did so for only a small increase in the share of uninsured people who gained health coverage.

So it’s not surprising that this terrible bargain passed by deception, or that the program’s architect thinks that Americans were too stupid to be trusted with the truth. It is disappointing, but when the president’s most high-profile promise about the program was judged the lie of the year by PolitiFact, it isn’t surprising.