“The next day, I woke up and turned on my iPad,” Weinstein recalls. “I did a quick search. You know, 'Gee, if I wonder if anything is out there about this Jonathan Gruber guy?' And the first result was about this video. 'Holy crap, what is going on?' Excuse my language. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. Later that day, a friend told me that Rush Limbaugh was talking about this video. I’m at WaWa, and I'm eating a sandwich in the car, and Limbaugh comes back from commercial and says 'There's more on this Gruber video. The White House is responding.' I’m like, 'What do you mean, the White House is responding?'”

There came a wave of reporters, senators, and wonks arguing that Gruber had mangled the description of congressional intent. They were matched with more clips of Gruber suggesting that, no, really, the subsidies were intended to nudge states into creating exchanges. Gruber, all of a sudden, was getting the sort of vetting previously reserved for high court nominees or Senate candidates. All because somebody actually paid attention to the words he was blabbing at sleepy-looking health care conferences. He wasn't even eavesdropping. He was just...listening.

I wondered if Weinstein shared Gruber's worry that a victory for the King plaintiffs would make health care unaffordable for millions of people. “If they do undo the subsidies, there’ll be a disruption, and the markets will adjust,” he says. “Some states will build their own exchanges. People will say, 'Oh, you’re trying to kill 5 million people,' but I do believe there'll be a solution.”

Before he hangs up, Weinstein asks me to remember two things. One: He doesn't actually have a position on the validity of the anti-subsidy lawsuits. Two: He does not hate Jonathan Gruber.

“Apparently people have been posting his MIT information and bullying him,” he says. “I’ve been telling people to not do that. I don't like that at all. Do not bully him.”

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