Contrary To White House Denials, Emails Show Jonathan Gruber Was 'Integral' To Obamacare
Last fall, videos emerged showing MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare—mocking “the stupidity of the American voter” for not perceiving the ways in which the controversial health law concealed its true costs. At the time, President Obama and others went through great lengths to deny Gruber’s centrality to Obamacare. But 20,000 pages of new emails, obtained from MIT by the House Oversight Committee, appear to prove Gruber’s critical role. And Gruber’s role may help decide the King v. Burwell case that is now before the Supreme Court, the one that will shape Obamacare’s implementation for years to come.
(DISCLOSURE: I am an adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but the opinions in this post are mine, and do not necessarily correspond to those of Gov. Perry.)
Gruber, the ‘independent expert’
In October 2009, as the debate over Obamacare crested in Congress, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a prescient analysis projecting that, under Obamacare, health insurance premiums would increase by 47 percent in 2016 for people who bought coverage on their own: the “individual” or “non-group” market in health insurance parlance.
If anything, PwC understated Obamacare’s impact on individual-market premiums. But the report directly contradicted President Obama’s wild claim that Obamacare would “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.” Democrats understood how much the report threatened the passage of Obamacare, and rolled out Jonathan Gruber—an “independent expert”—to assure senators that the “Affordable Care Act” would live up to its name.
Gruber scored an interview with Ezra Klein, then blogging at the Washington Post, in which Gruber said that “what we know for sure the bill will do is that it will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” (Emphasis added.) Gruber’s comments were trumpeted by Obamacare’s advocates as proof that the PwC report was “deceptive.”
Gruber, the Obamacare architect
Gruber was no independent expert. The Obama administration paid him nearly $400,000 as a consultant on Obamacare’s design, especially its new layer of federal health insurance regulation. But Gruber tried to avoid disclosing this conflict in his public commentary and appearances. Democratic officials did as well, in order to maintain the pose that Gruber’s opinions were non-partisan. Indeed, when Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) specifically asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a list of all its paid consultants, Gruber’s name was mysteriously omitted.
The emails obtained from MIT show that on January 8, 2010, Gruber emailed Jeanne Lambrew—the White House’s most important internal employee on Obamacare issues—for advice on how to handle an inquiry from Politico about his lucrative contract. “Funny,” wrote Gruber, “the attack we anticipated from the left is now coming from the right. Here is my proposed response—can you please let me know if you see a problem with this?” Lambrew asked him to hold off so she could “check with [White House] friends.”
Gruber kept Lambrew and her colleagues apprised of his discussions with Ezra Klein, and Lambrew praised Gruber for “being an integral part” of Obamacare’s development.
Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of the new email trove.
This piece originally appeared in Forbes