› The $400,000 Opinion for Alleged Healthcare Reform

By Steve Schultz, OperationRedState.com

You’ve likely read a lot in the past months about MIT economist Jonathan Gruber.  As a matter of face, I’ve gone ahead and posted links to a bunch of articles with him offering economic advice on healthcare reform and how it will decrease the deficit while insuring all Americans.

You’ve also likely read about the alleged $400,000 the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) he received for his opinions.  That’s right.  An agency controlled by the Executive branch paid $400,000 for an opinion.  Not only is this another example of Washington throwing away their promised transparency, but this is borderline bribery and definitely corrupt.  Senator Grassley brought this attention with his letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

According to The Hill blog Grassley wrote, “When an academic leader comes before Congress to advocate a position, Congress should have confidence that he or she is independent and not being paid to assist the administration.

It really taints everything this particular advocate has said to learn after the fact that he was being paid to say it and the fact that he was being paid was kept secret.”

This is disgusting.  This economist from MIT accepts a $400,000 bribe from HHS to offer opinions that happened to support the healthcare reform bill that a majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, oppose.  While millions of Americans are out of work and under-employed, we are purchasing opinions for $400,000!   This is asinine.

I’d like Senator Grassley to ask for greater transparency on the Stimulus “Slush” Fund.  Where is this money coming from that HHS can just shell out $400,000 to an MIT economist for, what Washington likes to call, “consulting services.”  They already sent stimulus money to convicted felons in prison.  Now we’re purchasing MIT economists.  Earlier this year Greg Morcroft of MarketWatch.com said it’s typical for bills like the stimulus to lose about 10% to fraud.  Not to allude that this $400,000 was procured fraudulently, but with that kind of waste how does the HHS justify such an expensive opinion.  I guess responsibility never has been the name of their game anyways.

Congress needs to act on this and there needs to be some sort of action against this type of behavior.  The corruption in Washington is explicit and needs to end.  How are the American people going to have faith in legislation like healthcare, stimulus packages and many more when such blatant, irresponsible actions like this are taking place.  Both parties in Washington need to take measures on unethical and corrupt behavior.  No more of this one party pointing at the other.  If you are compromising your values and buying your way through legislation, you should be removed from office.  Not just from Congress but executive agencies as well, like HHS.  Someone in Washington needs to propose a bill with a 99% tax on congressional and executive bribes.  That could probably pay off our deficit quickly as well.

These were put together by Daily Kos:

• 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.