Jonathan
Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and
Obamacare architect who helped craft both the Massachusetts health
care overhaul and the federal health reform law, has picked up
state and federal government contracts worth millions
of dollars over the years for consulting work on Obamacare, as well
as other health policy issues.
Tomorrow, he’ll be testifying in front of the House Oversight
Committee. The Department of Health and Human Services has already
made a written
request that administration staffers not be placed next to
Gruber in the lineup, according to Politico.
That’s not the only slight Gruber has suffered recently. After
coming under fire after a variety of recorded remarks surfaced in
which Gruber argued that deception was employed in order to pass
the Affordable Care Act, Gruber has lost some of his valuable
consulting contracts.
In November, the state of Vermont said it would
not pay out the rest of Gruber’s contract, reportedly worth
$400,000. He had already been paid $160,000.
Around the same time, North Carolina
also said it would be ending its contract with Gruber, also
said to be worth $400,000. Gruber would end up getting just
$100,000.
Gruber’s various health care consulting contracts help shed
light on both his influence and the nature of some of his
deceptions.
The federal contracts, worth just shy of $400,000, provided
access to economic simulations that allowed the bill’s authors to
perfect—and, one might argue, to game—the law’s Congressional
Budget Office score.
Gruber misled people about the existence of those contacts even
while offering up supportive quotes about the health law in the
guise of an independent analyst. When contacted by the media, he
declined to disclose his work on the law for the
government.
More damningly, when Gruber published an op-ed in The
Washington Post at the end of 2009, he was required to submit
a disclosure form. The form specifically asked
if he had “received any funding, for research or otherwise, from
organizations or persons identified in the column.” His answer?
“No.” The Post subsequently published an update.
It’s also interesting to compare Gruber’s work for the federal
government with his work for the states. the thrust of Gruber’s
most prominent report to the federal government was that Obamacare
would lower health premiums. That report was widely cited in the
media, as well as by lawmakers, including then House Majority
Leader Nancy Pelosi and the White House.
But as Avik Roy
pointed out in 2012 at Forbes, Gruber’s later
reports to states investigating the possibility of setting up
health insurance exchanges under the federal law suggested
something rather different about how the law would affect premiums.
Gruber, Roy wrote, was “quietly telling state governments that the
law will significantly increase the cost of insurance.” Indeed, in
at least one report, produced
for the state of Wisconsin, Gruber estimated that for a
significant percentage of people, costs would go up even
after the application of the law’s insurance
subsidies.
These are the sort of deceptions and misdirections that Gruber
described in the wave of videos that were unearthed earlier this
year: declining to reveal relevant information and switching
messages depending on which audience is listening. That’s how
Gruber sold Obamacare, and it’s also how he sold his own
work.
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