The Washington Post called Jonathan Gruber the Democrat "party's most influential health-care expert"

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-washington-post-called-jonathan.html

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist that said that Obamacare had to be made
deliberately deceptive, in order to be passed, was considered the most
influential expert of the Democrat Party in 2007.   This was no self
promotion, but a pronouncement by one of the most influential and prominent
of the old media outlets, the Washington Post:

On the other side was an economist from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology who has become possibly the party's most influential health-care
expert and a voice of realism in its internal debates.
In a precursor to the recent revelations that Gruber aided in the
administration's deliberate deception of the American public, the article in
the Washington Post goes on to quote him:

"Plans which minimize the disruption to the existing system are more likely
to succeed than plans that rip up the existing system and start over," said
Gruber, who has consulted with the three leading Democratic campaigns about
their health plans. "It doesn't take a genius to see that. That's not to say
that plans ripping it up wouldn't be better -- I just think they're
political non-starters."
This contradicts the story that the Obama administration and Nancy Pelosi
have been pushing, that they did not know Jonathan Gruber, and he did not
have much to do with Obamacare.