Economist quoted in health care debate by White House paid $780,000+ by Obama Administration

[SandWalker1984]

I received the following email from firedoglake today:

For almost the entirety of the health care debate, the Obama Administration has relied on economist Jonathan Gruber to make the public case for its idea of reform - even the most unpopular parts. But as Firedoglake revealed on Friday, the Obama Administration has failed to disclose that it paid the same economist more than $780,000.

Jonathan Gruber's work has been cited by the White House, Members of Congress, and countless media outlets, but not once did the Obama Administration disclose it was paying him more than $780,000 in tax dollars. This is a huge ethical violation that undermines the entirety of health care reform.

Sign our petition to President Obama: come clean on Jonathan Gruber and anyone else receiving public money to push health care reform.
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/gruber?source=email01112010

http://action.firedoglake.com/gruber

Once we broke this scandal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, and other publications all said they should have disclosed Gruber's lucrative contracts if they were aware of the conflict of interest. Dozens of Members of Congress cited Gruber's work in their floor speeches. The White House pushed Gruber hundreds of times to the press and on its website.

While Gruber's ethical lapses are his own personal and professional issue, the true problem here is that the White House used Gruber and his research as a seemingly unbiased source in support of its unpopular reforms.

***********

Obama promised to make the Government open and transparent. Another broken promise.

[NJmaverick]

1. Do you have any REAL sources to back up these claims

other than the ravings of a crazy woman?

[madrchsod]

6. seems he thought universal healthcare could work.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0905.gruber.html

another

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/01/on_jonathan_grubers_conflict_of_interest.php


i think firedog has jumped the shark

[Donnachaidh]

2. oohhh, watch the number count on reccing

Now it's not nice to point out the paid shills of this administration. Don't you know that?

[xchrom]

3. If it's true -- let the chips do what they do. Nt

[Viking12]

4. Manufactroversy.

See discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7439667

[Better Believe It]

7. So how many hours did he work for that $780,000? Sounds like a sweet deal!

Well, if he put in 100 hours that's $7,800 per hour.

If he worked 1,000 hours that's $780 per hour. He must be really smart! Even rocket scientists don't make that much!

Did he also get per diem?

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NYCGirl]

9. Here's Nobel winning cheerleader Paul Krugman on the manufactured controversy:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/jonathan-gruber/

The truth is that this is no big deal. Gruber’s grant is from HHS, not the West Wing; it’s basically the same kind of thing as, say, an epidemiologist receiving a grant from the National Institutes of Health. You wouldn’t ordinarily say that this tarnishes the epidemiologist’s credentials as an independent analyst on infectious diseases, unless you want to say that nobody receiving a research grant can be considered independent.

The only reasons you might see this differently would be if Gruber were either receiving a sweetheart deal, or seemed to have changed his views to accommodate his sponsors. Neither is remotely true. Gruber is very much the go-to guy on modeling reform: it’s hard to think of who else could be doing the work better. And his position on reform has been entirely consistent.

Should Gruber have made a fuller disclosure? Yes — I think he was being too much of an academic, taking for granted that everyone understands the difference between being a political hired gun and receiving a research grant. Should he disclose the contract every time he writes anything? Well, maybe — but a brief mention should suffice. When you’re writing 800-word op-eds, you need to reserve as much space as possible for real content.

And I have every intention of continuing to cite Gruber on matters related to health care. He’s the top micro-modeling expert, and getting this stuff right is more important than this essentially trivial controversy.

[DevonRex]

10. The "cheerleader" meme is not allowed. nt

[DevonRex]

8. You might be interested in Paul Krugman's take on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7439667&mesg_id=7439667

[Davis_X_Machina]

11. Here's another look at the 'scandal'....

BooMan Tribune.

[SandWalker1984]

12. DailyKos story regarding lack of disclosure

UPDATE: Jonathan Gruber Didn't Disclose He Was Paid $392,000 by HHS!
by slinkerwink

Jonathan Gruber, who has been the biggest proponent of the excise tax, and was quoted extensively in several articles and linked to by other health care analyst bloggers to defend the excise tax, did not disclose that he was paid by the HHS to the tune of $297,600 in his recent and ongoing contract to provide technical assistance for evaluation options for national healthcare reform.

This contract apparently was a continuation of another contract he'd held for $95,000 from March 2009 to July 25, 2009 according to emptywheel.

So, for the entire year, he received $392,000 from HHS and did not disclose that at all in any of his articles, except in a December 24, 2009 article for the New England Journal of Medicine. You have to search really hardto find the form of disclosure on that article. This first came up to my attention in a comment from Mote Dai.


Here are the links to articles written in the past eight months by Jonathan Gruber, in which he didn't disclose his being paid by the HHS agency within the Obama administration.

September 3, 2009, Boston Globe
Jonathan Gruber produced a set of figures on December 21, 2009 that have been cited in numerous blogs and articles at the request of Jonathan Cohn at TNR.

Jonathan Gruber as one of the 23 economists who sent a letter to the WH extolling the virtues of the excise tax on November 17th.

Also, Gruber's article in the New England Journal of Medicine mentions that no conflict of interest was reported. Gruber solicited the funds from HHS on May 21st, 2009, and received the award on June 19, 2009. The article was published on June 10, 2009 on the website. The print version came out on July 2, 2009 without being updated about Gruber's pending contract with HHS. It also did not mention his second contract of $95,000 which was scheduled to end on July 25, 2009. That second contract would HAVE required a disclosure which Gruber did not provide.

July 11, 2009, New York Times. Gruber also doesn't mention that he has a conflict of interest in pushing these specific proposals.

August 11, 2009, the Hastings Center. Still no mention of his being paid by HHS.

And even after Gruber made that disclosure form for the New England Journal of Medicine on December 25, 2009, he still didn't disclose in any of his articles after that, including the December 28th, 2009 article which he wrote for the Washington Post.
Dr. Gruber, has been quoted extensively by the White House as an 'objective voice' on health care reform. He also has been cited five times on the White House blog.

He also was one of the 23 economists that Peter Orzsag reached out to when Peter Orzsag asked them for their views in support of health insurance reform. Here is the letter as provided by Professor DeLong.

Dr. Gruber has responded about his lack of disclosure to Ben Smith at Politico, which you can see here below:

I asked Gruber about the reports, and he responded by stressing that the contract was not for public relations, but for analysis, and that he's long advocated for a consistent set of policies:



I do indeed have a contract with HHS. Throughout this year I have provided technical assistance to the administration and to Congress with my micro-simulation model, as well as based on my experience as a member of the Massachusetts health connector board. But NONE of the work I have done in public, or any public declarations I ahve made, has been in any way funded by the Administration. That funding was strictly for internal work that I did for the administration and, via the administration, for congress. All externally visible work and comments, such as my editorials or public reports, have been done on my own time.

Moreover, at no time have I publicly advocated a position that I did not firmly believe - indeed, I have been completely consistent with my academic track record. On the two issues this article raises:

1) I am known in economics as one of the leading experts on the impact of health insurance costs on wages - indeed, I wrote my thesis on that topic and have written extensively since on the fact that health insurance costs are fully translated into wages. I was asked by the editors of the Handbook of Health Economics, a review of literature in this area, to write the review article on this topic.

2) In my role as a member of the MA Health Connector board, I had to help decide what were affordable subsidies for our citizens. I was surprised to find how little work there was on this topic so I undertook a study to help lay out what might be considered affordable. I have since replicated that analysis at the federal level. Every position I have advocated on this topic is completely consistent with these reports.

Gruber told POLITICO that he has told reporters of the contract "whenever they asked" and noted that he formally disclosed that "I am a paid consultant to the Obama Administration" in a form attached to his most recent, December 24 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, though it wasn't widely known by reporters on the beat.

I find it interesting that Dr. Gruber did not mention his being paid by HHS in any of his articles, and especially in that June 10, 2009, article on the New England Journal of Medicine which requires a disclosure to be made. And that after he made disclosure on the December 24 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, he still did not make it in any of his articles after that.



Say what you will, but Gruber's failure to disclose when required leads me to believe he was trying to hide information on where funds were coming from.

[Better Believe It]

13. Gruber was trying to hide information on his funding? Oh, come now. They don't do that, do they?

I'm sure he worked very hard for those hundreds of thousands of dollars and just forgot to mention it.

[xchrom]

14. Kick

[slipslidingaway]

15. kick - Gruber on a national HC system - thanks to Dr. McCanne

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/jon_gruber.html

"Having through the years listened to and studied the work of Jonathan Gruber, I believe that he is a very credible individual with high integrity. But he is also an individual with a bias.

In a 2006 presentation to America's Health Insurance Plans, he stated, "National health insurance means wiping you all out. I just personally don't see that as even worth discussing, for political reasons. As well, I think there are some real economic arguments. At least I think there are economic cases to be made on either side. But the truth is, I just don't think, politically, we're just ever going to be in a place where we can seriously consider national health insurance, Canadian-style health insurance. I just don't think it's worth our brain cells worrying about it."
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/030706_ahip_taxpolicy_transcript.pdf

Earlier this year, when 500 physicians from Massachusetts signed a letter to Sen. Edward Kennedy stating that the Massachusetts model was not a good model for the nation, while encouraging a Medicare-for-all style national health care system, Jonathan Gruber responded by saying the physicians "let the perfect be the enemy of the good." It's a remarkable admission that he concedes that Medicare-for-all is "perfect" but that he rejects it in favor of his preferred private insurance model he promoted before the association of health insurance lobbyists.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/february/massachusetts_2006_.php

(Disclosure: I'm Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program.)"

[votingupstart]

16. (if true) Why do people try to hide this stuff -- its going to get out

just be up front about it - now everything he says is viewed as a paid for ad not objective advice.