Tuesday, December 9, 2014

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Jonathan Gruber of MIT Regrets 'Arrogance' on Health Law - New York Times





WASHINGTON — Jonathan Gruber, the health economist whose incendiary comments about “the stupidity of the American voter” have embarrassed the Obama administration, apologized Tuesday for what he described as his “glib, thoughtless and sometimes downright insulting comments.”


“I am not a political adviser nor a politician,” said Dr. Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology who was a paid consultant to the Obama administration in 2009-10.


Dr. Gruber minimized his role, saying he had used an “economic microsimulation model” to help the administration and Democrats in Congress assess the impact of policies in the Affordable Care Act. He later defended the law in a number of speeches. In one, he said the law had been adopted thanks in part to the stupidity of voters and a “lack of transparency” about its financing.


Testifying on Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Dr. Gruber said: “I behaved badly, and I will have to live with that, but my own inexcusable arrogance is not a flaw in the Affordable Care Act. The A.C.A. is a milestone accomplishment for our nation that already has provided millions of Americans with health insurance.”




Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. health economist, testifying in Washington on Tuesday. Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The chairman of the committee, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, said supporters of the law had passed it and sold it to the public with half-truths and deception. He said that Dr. Gruber and the administration had displayed “a pattern of intentionally misleading the public about the true nature and impact of Obamacare.”


The senior Democrat on the committee, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, joined in the criticism of Dr. Gruber. He said the professor’s comments were “absolutely stupid” and “incredibly disrespectful.” Worse, he said, Dr. Gruber’s statements gave Republicans “a political gift in the relentless campaign to tear down the Affordable Care Act.”



At the hearing, Mr. Issa showed a video in which Dr. Gruber suggested that supporters of the health law had written it in such a way that the Congressional Budget Office would not count required premium payments as tax revenue.


“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure C.B.O. did not score the mandate as taxes,” Dr. Gruber said in the video, from October 2013. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”


Dr. Gruber told the committee on Tuesday that he had made “insulting and mean comments that are totally uncalled for in any situation.”


“It is never appropriate to try to make oneself seem more important or smarter by demeaning others,” Dr. Gruber said. “I know better. I knew better. I am embarrassed, and I am sorry.”


Another witness, Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also found herself on the defensive.


She acknowledged on Tuesday that she had made a mistake when she told the committee in September that 7.3 million people were enrolled in private health insurance plans through the exchanges.


About 400,000 people with medical and dental insurance plans were “inadvertently counted twice,” she said, so “the number of individuals enrolled in medical coverage plans was approximately 6.9 million,” not 7.3 million.


“While this mistake was regrettable, it shouldn’t obscure the fact that the Affordable Care Act is working,” Ms. Tavenner said. “We have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of uninsured Americans and exceptionally low growth across a wide variety of measures of health care costs.”


Ms. Tavenner also responded to criticism from federal investigators who have identified many security weaknesses in HealthCare.gov, the website for the federal insurance exchange.


“We remain committed to stringent privacy and security protocols to protect consumers’ personally identifiable information,” Ms. Tavenner said. “Consumers can use the marketplace with confidence that their personal information is secure.”


She said the government conducted daily security tests to prevent misuse of the website, which asks consumers to submit huge amounts of personal information.









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