If not for the undercover video below in which MIT professor, and chief Obamacare architect, Jonathan Gruber attributed the passage of Obamacare to the “stupidity of the American voter,” most Americans wouldn’t even have known it was Gruber who was responsible for eternally destroying the healthcare system in the U.S.
Unfortunately, the now infamous MIT prof just had to open his mouth and the video just had to go viral…which means that all the rest of us have to live the remainder of our lives with the knowledge that one elitist, leftist professor who has probably never worked a day outside of academia and/or government in his life is the sole reason we can suddenly no longer afford to buy health insurance for our families.
Now, according to the Vermont Rutland Herald, Gruber’s perpetual desire to save American voters from their own stupidity has landed him in some hot water with Vermont’s Attorney General T.J. Donovan. As the Herald explains, Gruber was apparently hired as a consultant by Vermont’s former Governor to assist with analyzing a single-payer healthcare system but got a little too creative with his invoices…
Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan said his office has concluded an investigation into the invoices and billing practices of Dr. Jonathan Gruber, an economic consultant who contracted with the state to provide policy expertise, research and economic modeling for Vermont’s abandoned single-payer healthcare system.
Former Gov. Peter Shumlin sought to create the single-payer system, known as Green Mountain Care, but eventually walked away from the plan after determining it would cost too much. The attorney general’s office’s began the investigation into Gruber’s billing after receiving a referral by State Auditor Doug Hoffer.
Donovan said Thursday his office and Gruber reached an agreement to settle the state’s potential legal claim that Gruber submitted false claims to the state under Vermont’s Civil False Claims Act. Donovan said his office concluded that Gruber’s conduct violated the Vermont Civil False Claims Act. Gruber denied a violation, but in order to resolve the case, he agreed to forgo any further payments from the state that he might be owed.
Donovan’s office found that Gruber submitted at least two invoices that were false with respect to the amount of work performed by a research assistant working for Gruber. The supporting documentation provided by Gruber did not reflect the actual hours worked by the research assistant, nor did the assistant keep records accurately reflecting the hours he devoted to the state project, Donovan said.
Gruber’s contract was originally supposed to pay him as much as $400,000 to test economic models related to Shumlin’s health care proposal. The contract allowed the state to use the Gruber Microsimulation Model that Gruber developed to simulate the implementation of Shumlin’s plan and test various financing mechanisms.
Of course, this is also the same Jonathan Gruber who blamed his epic Obamacare failure on President Trump less than 4 months after he moved into the White House:
Gruber: “Look, and whose fault is this? Before President Trump was elected there were no counties in America that did not have an insurer. Since President Trump’s been elected, a massive degree of uncertainty…”
Wallace: “Wait, you’re going to blame the problems with Obamacare on President Trump?”
Gruber: “We had a situation under Obamacare where there was a one-time premium increase last year that made up for the fact that insurers massively under-priced in the first two years.
The problem was fixed. Insurer profits were trending positively. Insurers were saying positive things about their ability to stay in the exchanges and succeed.
Then you have a President who comes in, undercuts open enrollment, doesn’t honor the obligations this law makes to insurers, and, as a result, premiums are going up and insurers are exiting.”
Forward to the 7:50 mark for the relevant exchange:
All of which begs the question, where exactly do we go to bid on the government contracts where our analysis can be 100% wrong but we can still make $400,000?
via http://ift.tt/2ik8BQo Tyler Durden