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The David Frum Show

Architect of Obamacare: Health Care Is Still a Mess

The David Frum Show

The Atlantic

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.62.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode of “The David Frum Show,” The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts on the shocking alleged corruption that has informed President Donald Trump’s actions towards Ukraine and the scandal of the recently proposed “peace plan” by the United States. He goes on to discuss how the many scandals of the Trump presidency make it hard it to focus on just one, as it is quickly replaced in the news cycle by another. Then David is joined by Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor of Economics and the chairman of the economics department at MIT. Gruber discusses the backlash he faced as a key architect of the Affordable Care Act and why the American health-care system still feels so broken. David and Gruber also talk about the war on both vaccines and science that is being waged by the conservative right. Finally, David closes the episode with a discussion on They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, and what we can learn about teaching soldiers to commit crimes. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

They say, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

0:09.5

The idea being that we only get better when we surround ourselves with people who are brighter,

0:14.0

more experienced, or more talented than we are.

0:16.6

My name is John Dick, and I'm never, ever in the wrong room.

0:19.9

At my company, Civic Science, the brightest minds in the world are studying people, culture, and I'm never, ever in the wrong room. At my company's civic science,

0:21.2

the brightest minds in the world are studying people, culture, and markets in revolutionary

0:25.2

new ways, providing glimpses into a future you've never seen before. Me? I drank my way

0:30.8

through a party school in college and only became an entrepreneur because I couldn't get a real

0:34.8

job doing anything else. I owe everything to a long list of colleagues,

0:38.9

mentors, and friends who made me better, or at least made me look better. So I started a podcast to

0:44.2

introduce you to some of the brilliant people I've encountered along the way. You'll meet

0:47.9

visionaries in business, technology, media, entertainment, even politics. They'll tell us how they see

0:53.0

the future and how they're making

0:54.6

it happen. But we'll also keep it real. You don't go through life with the last name Dick without

0:59.3

learning how to laugh at yourself. So we'll ask these incredibly successful people to share some of

1:03.8

their most embarrassing stories, their dumbest mistakes, and how they made them into the people they

1:08.2

are today. And we'll do all of that with data at the center of everything,

1:12.4

because the world has never been in greater need of truth.

1:15.3

And you can only get there with honest, objective, and reliable data,

1:19.6

which is what civic science is all about.

1:21.8

So please, subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast player.

1:25.7

Come listen to some of the smartest people I've ever met, and me, the dumbest guy in the room.

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