North Carolina last week fired embattled economist Jonathan Gruber who has taken heat in Vermont and nationwide for comments regarding the Affordable Care Act, according to a report from WRAL.
Vermont took similar action last week when officials announced that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor had agreed to complete his work for the state without further payment.
That is only a verbal agreement at this time, as there is no documentation of it currently, according to Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform.
North Carolina hired Gruber to analyze federal data as part of a study in the use of managed care programs in that state.
State Auditor Beth Wood terminated that contact last week. North Carolina will pay Gruber $100,000 for work he has already completed.
“We can’t use you on a project where you have a bias or where people might even think you have a bias,” Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Wood, told WRAL referring to Gruber.
The economist’s comments about the Affordable Care Act created a national firestorm recently and have led some to question whether Gruber believes in a transparent political process.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said in remarks at the University of Pennsylvania last year. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
Republicans and other critics in Vermont, many of whom are still calling for the state to terminate him and have his work vetted independently, question Gruber’s integrity, arguing that he’s displayed a willingness to mislead people to promote an agenda.
In 2006, Gruber’s econometrics greatly underestimated what it would cost to provide insurance subsidies as part of the Massachusetts health reform program, which became the model for the Affordable Care Act.
During the national debate over the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Gruber penned an op-ed for the New York Times making arguments about how the law should be crafted, without disclosing he had a consulting contract with the Obama administration — despite having signed an agreement with the Times to disclose any such conflicts.
Vermont has paid Gruber $160,000 of a $400,000 contract for microeconomic simulation of different ways to pay for a public universal health care program, often called single-payer.
That money is split evenly between Gruber and his research assistants. The state has said it will continue to pay them, but not Gruber.
It expects to pay out another $120,000 on the contract, with Gruber giving up an additional $120,000.
