This is what Paul Krugman said today in his column about FireDogLake and their phony scandal about Jonathan Gruber and nondisclosure. If this is the first time you've heard about this nontroversy, Slinkerwink and Marcy Wheeler have been the loudest voices behind an effort to discredit one of the top healthcare economists in the country. What did Jon do that was so wrong?
Krugman
Gruber — who is one of the three or four top health care economists in the nation — turns out to have a large research grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, for modeling the consequences of various reform plans. This has led some people, mainly Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake, to question Gruber’s objectivity.
Or as Jane Hamsher puts it
Gruber's ethical lapses are his own personal and professional issue,
the true problem here is that the White House used Gruber and his
research as a seemingly unbiased source in support of its unpopular
reforms...
A biased insider can't be an
unbiased outside observer. But that's exactly the approach of the Obama
Administration, to the tune of $780,000 in tax dollars.The
Obama Administation's $780,000 "buy-an-economist" scandal threatens to
shake the foundation of health care reform. We need to get to the
bottom of this.
The problem for Jane is that she never gives an example of the bias. Which of Gruber's positions changed after the big payoff for Gruber and staff? Karen Tumulty found more than one time Gruber has gone against the administration. Her good piece goes into this and more. It concludes that
These kinds of comments that convince me that, wherever he is getting his paycheck, Gruber has not lost his objectivity.
Krugman agrees
The truth is that this is no big deal. Gruber’s grant is from HHS, not the West Wing; it’s basically the same kind of thing as, say, an epidemiologist receiving a grant from the National Institutes of Health. You wouldn’t ordinarily say that this tarnishes the epidemiologist’s credentials as an independent analyst on infectious diseases, unless you want to say that nobody receiving a research grant can be considered independent.
Krugman goes on to share how this strategy was used in the past by the right wing to discredit him. And no surprise, Fox News is on this anti-Gruber bandwagon as well. Krugman concludes
What the folks at Firedoglake should ask themselves is this: do you really want to become just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals?
The bottom line is this: Jon Gruber is a technical expert, some of whose research has been supported — entirely properly — by government agencies. And we need his input into policy.
Another Jon looked at this nontroversy as well. Jonathon Cohn concludes
For what it's worth, one of the reasons I cite Gruber frequently is that, in my experience, he's sincere to a fault. As he says, his views have been consistent, going back many years. And, more than most experts I know, he is willing to call out friends and allies when his projections suggest they are wrong. That doesn't mean he's always right, of course. (He and I differ over some more subjective questions, like how much cost-sharing is excessive; I like single-payer systems and he, I think, doesn't.) But, like so many of my colleagues, I trust him to tell me what he really thinks--and, more important, to use numbers at which he's arrived honestly.
Why are they trying to marginalize Gruber? Because in his expert opinion
the excise tax in the Senate legislation will raise U.S. worker wages by a total of $223 billion over the next decade, which would mean about $660 in extra annual earnings per employer-insured household by 2019. Moreover, the vast majority of those wage increases accrue to middle- and lower-income households; 90 percent would go to families with incomes below $200,000.
So in the end, we have a policy that provides the necessary financing to pay for subsidies to low-income families; induces employers to buy more cost-effective health insurance, lowering U.S. health-care spending; offsets a bias in our tax system that favors more expensive insurance; and raises wages by $223 billion over 10 years. To put a twist on an old saying: The Senate assessment on high-cost insurance plans doesn't walk like a tax or talk like a tax -- because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing the health reform we so desperately need.
The writer is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I included that last part to remind you that Gruber is already highly paid.. by a private institution. One that has an over $8B endowment much of it invested in corporations. Maybe we should ask Obama why he hired this guy when Gruber's employer benefits if the economy is turned around? Doesn't he see this blatant conflict of interest? ;)