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Maybe it’s easier to get tenure at MIT than we thought. At least that’s our reaction to the Forrest Gump routine put on Tuesday before Congress by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who sounded for all the world as if he knew nothing more about politics and health care than the lovable bumpkin who always showed up when history was being made. (12/9)

A gaffe, under the oft-cited Michael Kinsley rule, is when somebody in Washington accidentally speaks the truth. But what happens when frankness leads you to say something so monumentally stupid — the verbal equivalent of a pratfall, a face-plant into a mud pit — that “gaffe” doesn’t cover it? In that case, you have Grubered yourself. (Dana Milbank, 12/9)

On Tuesday, the Republican-led House Committee on Oversight took obvious pleasure in raking MIT economist Jonathan Gruber over the coals about foolish and uninformed comments he made regarding the politics of health reform. Gruber was deeply apologetic, acknowledging that he is not an expert on politics and that his off-hand comments about the politics of health reform were uninformed and at times offensive. In public appearances, he called American voters "stupid" and suggested that politicians had deliberately obscured aspects of the Affordable Care Act. (Theda Skocpol, 12/9)

But it turns out that Americans have reacted to Grubergate with a shrug, at least so far. Preliminary data from this month’s Kaiser Health News Index shows that just about 2 in 10 Americans say they have been following the story closely (and just 1 in 10 say very closely), which puts Grubergate far behind major news such as the protests that followed the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury’s decision not to indict (closely followed by about 8 in 10) and the conflicts involving ISIS and other militant groups (closely followed by about 7 in 10). (Drew Altman, 12/9)

President Obama reportedly had a mysterious sore throat for weeks, but now the diagnosis is in: acid reflux into the throat .... Since 1975, the occurrence of reflux has increased 400 percent ... and reflux-related esophageal cancer has increased more than 500 percent to become the most rapidly increasing cancer in the United States. ... It may not offer him a lot of comfort, but Obama’s acid reflux could have a silver lining because so many Americans are similarly affected and so many of these cases are misdiagnosed. Greater awareness can do much good for many people. (Jamie Koufman, 12/8)

In the past, how long you’d been on the waiting list was the main factor that determined how close you were to getting a compatible kidney. ... The longer you waited, the further you moved up the list. The clock started when your transplant center did the necessary tests and listed you as a transplant candidate. The old system hurt those patients, most of whom were black, who had spent years on dialysis before they got referred for transplants, whether because of medical factors, insufficient health insurance or complacent nephrologists. ... The new system instead starts the clock when a patient goes on dialysis. (Virginia Postrel, 12/8)