Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Gruber Faces Backlash As Remarks Ripple Through States
The fallout over comments made by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist about the Affordable Care Act has spread to the states, where both Republicans and Democrats are pulling back from a man who sold his expertise about health systems. Vermont said it won鈥檛 continue to pay Jonathan Gruber for his work on its health-insurance plan, which aims to create universal coverage financed with public funds. Michigan lawmakers said they plan to investigate work he did for that state. (Armour, 11/19)
An economist who said "the stupidity of the American voter" helped pass the complex federal health care law has agreed to finish his work on Vermont's health insurance systems for free, a top state official said Wednesday. But the state will continue to pay assistants working with Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who advised the Obama administration as it crafted the Affordable Care Act. Vermont will likely end up paying about $280,000 of the original $450,000 the state had agreed to pay Gruber's team and a subcontractor, said Lawrence Miller, director of health reform for Gov. Peter Shumlin. (Gram, 11/19)
What did Gruber mean when he uttered this words in a now-infamous video that has inflamed hostility to the Affordable Care Act? This is a bit of a wonky subject, but we think it is worth explaining, because commentators on both the right and the left have jumped to the wrong conclusion. They assumed Gruber was discussing the fact that the administration had not described penalties for failing to get insurance as 鈥渢axes,鈥 even though the Supreme Court later said Obamacare was constitutional because the individual mandate was indeed a tax. But that鈥檚 not correct. (Kessler, 11/19)
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris on Wednesday questioned a National Institutes of Health grant awarded to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, an administration health care consultant who has come under fire for recent comments about the "stupidity of the American voter." "Recent developments related to Dr. Gruber raise questions about his objectivity and judgment, and thus the utility of his research," Harris and Republican Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania wrote in a letter to Dr. Francis Collins, the director of Bethesda-based NIH. (Fritze, 11/19)
