The economist who is credited as one of the brains behind “Obamacare” is under fire for saying that Democrats were able to pass the bill in part because of the “stupidity of the American voter.”

Economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the consultants on the Affordable Care Act, said during comments at a panel session at the Annual Health Economics Conference that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” and a lack of intelligence from American voters was “critical” to getting the bill to pass, according to the Washington Post.

Video started circulating among conservative media outlets after the it became public. The comments came as part of a discussion between him and economist Mark Pauly on healthcare reform and the politics associated with that effort. The panel took place in October 2013, but only recently went viral.

Pauly had made a remark about financing transparency in the law, and the politics that revolved around the law’s controversial individual mandate, prompting Gruber to say that the bill was written to make sure that the Congressional Budget Office did not score the mandate as taxes, which would have raised the ire of voters.

After the video went viral, Gruber acknowledged that he “spoke inappropriately,” according to the Boston Herald.

Gruber said he was speaking off the cuff at an academic conference, and that he now regrets having made the comments.

He went on to say that he wished Obamacare had been done as it had been in Massachusetts, where the people could be given a pot of money that could be put toward health insurance, but the move was deemed politically unpalatable. As a result, the architects of the act were forced to focus on the tax code.

Gruber said during the video that Obamacare was written in a “tortured way” to avoid it being couched as a tax increase, which may have ended Democrats’ hopes of passing the bill.

Obamacare is still undergoing challenges, and may have a tough time surviving the new Republican-controlled House and Senate fully intact. The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case recently that challenges whether states can give out subsidies to poorer families under the act.