Face of the Democrat Party.
During the heyday of the ObamaCare push, Jonathan Gruber was
whiz-kid-in-chief. His number-crunching on the benefits of the plan was
frequently cited by Democrats trying to sell the proposal to the public.
Now, Washington Democrats have a new message: He’s not with us.
After a string of videos have emerged showing Gruber gloating about
how the law’s authors exploited Americans’ “stupidity,” the White House
has distanced itself. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi even claimed:
“I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.”
But while Jonathan Gruber might not have been a familiar name until
this week for many, Pelosi and the rest of the lawmakers who pushed the
law certainly knew who he was in 2009 and 2010.
A look at the record shows he was in fact paid to advise the
Department of Health and Human Services. And he continues to play a role
in health policy elsewhere, even as his unearthed videos cause
headaches for the administration, just ahead of this weekend’s Round 2
enrollment launch.
Gruber, an MIT professor and economist, has lived amid the health care debate in Washington for at least 20 years.
Gruber was retained by the Department of Health and Human Services in
2009 on a $297,600 contract to provide “technical assistance in
evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” Gruber also
confirmed to The Washington Post that he was paid another $95,000 before that, for a total of nearly $400,000.
Around this time, his analysis was not only featured on Pelosi’s House speaker website in 2009, but cited by the White House several times.
Though he often was billed as an analyst in media interviews where he
touted the merits of the plan, critics complained his financial ties to
the administration weren’t disclosed.
Gruber also spent a good deal of time testifying on the Hill and in
meetings at the White House – 19 visits from 2009 to June of this year,
according to publicly available logs
Aside from his work in Washington, he went on to bag similar
contracts for health care work at the state level after that, working
six-figure deals with multiple states.
“He talks himself about being in the Oval Office, on loan to
Congress, particularly the Senate Budget Committee,” Rich Weinstein, who
helped dig up the Gruber tapes, told FoxNews.com.
Weinstein has made a hobby of sorts out of researching Gruber’s
involvement. Weinstein said after losing his own health insurance plan
due to ObamaCare, he decided to do some background research on the
“architects” of the bill, who were making the rounds on the TV circuit
promoting the benefits of the legislation.
He first unearthed some Gruber remarks in July, showing him at a January 2012 forum appearing to suggest
that ObamaCare was designed to pressure states to set up health care
exchanges or risk valuable tax subsidies. (The precise ACA language on
subsidies and Congress’ intent is now the subject of a federal lawsuit, King v. Burwell, which the Supreme Court agreed to take up last week.)
That video attracted some attention, but he unleashed a bombshell
this week – a video where Gruber is heard referring to the American
public as stupid, forcing Gruber to respond. Conservative group American
Commitment and others circulated the video, and it went viral.
In the clip, Gruber suggested the law would not have passed if it was
made explicit that healthy people would “pay in” and the sick would get
money for coverage. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or
whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the
thing to pass,” he said.
Weinstein said while it’s a question how much of the law Gruber
actually wrote – it’s a sausage with many makers – there’s no doubt his
stamp is on it.
Gruber, an MIT economics professor who specializes in cost modeling
for health care policy, also helped design the individual mandate system
in Massachusetts, otherwise known as “RomneyCare” – which Obama aides
said was the basis for their proposal.
In a 2012 interview with PBS, he made his involvement crystal-clear:
“I helped [Governor] Romney develop the Massachusetts health care
reform, or Romneycare. I then worked with the Obama administration and
Congress to help develop the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare.”
The involvement didn’t end there. In 2011, he published a graphic novel, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works,” promoting the ACA.
Gruber is still in demand to help other states overhaul their health
care systems. According to reports in July, he was hired by Vermont Gov.
Peter Shumlin for $400,000 to study how to create a revenue stream for a
single-payer health care system. Records show Minnesota paid him nearly
$330,000 for health care work in 2011 and 2012. And around the same
time, a 2012 contract from Michigan offered $481 million for health care
analysis to a team of three firms, including Gruber and his “Gruber
Microsimulation Model.”
Some ObamaCare critics already are calling for hearings in response to the videos.
“They’re going to have to answer to the American people on C-SPAN in a
transparent way -- even though they didn’t do it when they passed the
bill, they’re going to be held accountable in public view this time,”
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News.
Defenders of ObamaCare say the tenets of the law have been
transparent from the get-go. If anything, they are blaming Gruber for
getting it wrong. Brian Beutler of The New Republic wrote, “His
suggestion that the key cost-sharing tradeoffs weren’t widely discussed
just isn’t true.”
Jerold Duquette, political science professor at Central Connecticut
State University, argued on his blog that "all legislation is framed for
maximum political acceptability and minimum pushback" and "includes
spin intended to short circuit opposition spin." He wrote: "The
incredibly phony outrage of conservative pols and pundits is pitiful."
Gruber, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, expressed regret
for his comments on Tuesday on MSNBC. “I was speaking off the cuff and I
basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret making those comments.”
Several more videos have emerged this week since the “stupidity”
clip. They included speeches where he talked about how the so-called
Cadillac tax on high-end health plans was envisioned to charge insurance
companies rather than consumers, all the while knowing the enrollees
would get hit with higher prices anyway as a result.
In one clip, he said of the Cadillac tax: “They proposed it and that
passed because the American people are too stupid to understand the
difference.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest disagreed with Gruber,
telling reporters on Thursday, “The fact of the matter is, the process
associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the
Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”
But ObamaCare opponents say this is more proof the administration and
Democrats on Capitol Hill misled lawmakers and voters. “This guy keeps
digging himself a deeper and deeper hole,” said Phil Kerpen, of American
Commitment, a conservative nonprofit which has spent millions on issue
ads favoring Republicans in the last two election cycles. “And all
Democrats can do is pretend that this guy wasn’t the architect who was
central to writing and passing the law when all the facts say he was.”