An MIT professor employed by the Shumlin administration to conduct economic modeling on single-payer health care apologized to Congress on Tuesday for remarks denigrating the American public.
Testifying before the House Oversight Committee, Jonathan Gruber said his remarks caught on video last year were “inexcusable.”
Gruber, who was an adviser to President Barack Obama on the Affordable Care Act, said in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013 that the key to passing the law was to prevent the public from believing that some of its mandates were taxes. Gruber denied Tuesday that he was the “architect” of the ACA.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said in the 2013 speech. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
Those comments touched off a storm of criticism nationally and in Vermont, where Republican lawmakers called on Gov. Peter Shumlin to fire Gruber. The criticism ultimately led the administration to stop paying Gruber for the remainder of his work on Green Mountain Care. Gruber agreed to complete the work without pay, but his assistants continue to be compensated by the state.
On Tuesday, Gruber apologized for those remarks but defended the Affordable Care Act under questioning by House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Issa attempted to establish Gruber’s own intelligence by asking, “Are you stupid?” When Gruber replied that he didn’t think so, Issa replied, “So you’re a smart man who said some stupid things.”
Gruber said he regretted the comments and was embarrassed by them.
“It is inexcusable that I tried to appear smarter by insulting others,” Gruber said.
“I am not an expert on politics, and my tone implied that I was, which is wrong. In other cases I simply made insulting and mean comments that are totally uncalled for in any situation. I sincerely apologize both for conjecturing with a tone of expertise and for doing so in such a disparaging fashion,” he said.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., agreed that the remarks were unacceptable but went on to question Gruber on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
Gruber said the law has resulted in lower rates of uninsured Americans, eliminated the denial of coverage for preexisting conditions and helped slow the growth in health care costs, which experts pegged at a historically low 3.7 percent in 2013.
Shumlin is expected to announce a financing and benefits plan for Green Mountain Care in the next few weeks. He has said that Gruber is not an adviser or an architect of the plan. Gruber’s method of modeling the economic impact of a single-payer system cannot be duplicated, the state’s chief of health care reform, Lawrence Miller, has said.
Republicans in the Statehouse have questioned whether Gruber’s economic work lacks credibility in light of his remarks.
The Legislature will take up the discussion when it convenes in January.
