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Firedoglake has been researching the relationship of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber with the Obama administration with regard to health care reform. You’ll find posts by emptywheel, dday and Jon Walker about the apparent conflicts of interest on Gruber’s part, that of the Obama administration and the media covering health care reform.
We’re still looking at the money – yes, follow the money, as Deep Throat once said – paid out to Gruber by the government. OUR MONEY, our tax dollars, paid out to Gruber under three administrations. You can view the numbers at this link, at which you’ll find a published spreadsheet with all information compiled from USASpending.gov and NIH websites (links to sources at the end of this post).
But there are more questions after looking at the data; perhaps the answers are innocuous and amount to nothing, but it would certainly be nice to have some answers.
What permits Gruber to be offered “non-compete” contracts?
What does it mean that a substantive number of the contracts offered to Gruber were let under classification, “Available only for groups such as disabled persons, prisoners, and regulated utilities”?
Why does Gruber have two business identities documented by two DUNS numbers, one of which is a nonprofit entity?
Why are the 2009 contracts for HHS paid to the nonprofit?
Why are there so many fields with “invalid” content or no content where one would reasonably expect some information?
Why are the contracts for Department of Justice, Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services all published under USASpending.gov, but the contracts for National Institute of Health not in the same location?
Why are is the content reported different between that in USASpending.gov and NIH? These two different sites do not supply content for the same fields and make for challenging comparison.
Are there other contracts to other governmental agencies which don’t appear in either of these two locations?
Are there other entities by which Gruber was contracted which we have not uncovered in either USASpending.gov or NIH databases?
If you have some background in combing through government contracts, any feedback you can offer would be great. Again, some of these questions may be very innocuous and have equally harmless answers. But having worked with auditors, I’ve seen little tiny questions turn into really big fur balls because they couldn’t be answered. Let’s audit our tax dollar expenditures here and see if we have anything else to be concerned about besides buying a “friendly” economist who’s failed to report potential conflicts of interest.
And if you see something which should be tweaked/changed/corrected in the published spreadsheet, please let us know.
Data sources:
72 Comments
And one question I have which isn’t the kind of thing most auditors would consider:
How did this guy, who made one campaign donation to John Kerry in 2004, managed to survive the Bush years in spite of the Kyle Sampsons/Monica Goodlngs?
Rayne, I’m so glad you posted this.
I was wondering about much of the money trail myself.
I was considering the possibilty of some correlation or influence of Zeke Emmanuel in this scenario.
He was/is associated with NIH, had extensive backgound with Massachusetts hospitals,also, and was advocating VAT tax as a feature of his OWN health reform plan.
I posted a series of comments regarding Zeke Emmanuel over at EW’s thread entitled, “Gruber did not Disclose Conflict to WaPo”.
Of especial interest to me was E. Emanuel taking to task the NIH guidelines, four years ago, their rules regarding conflict of interest-namely that employees of NIH should not own stock in big Pharma and bio med firms. Led a campaign to revise conflict of interest guidelines,in fact.
Now, I am NOT in any way attempting to malign Dr. Emmanuel, I am merely aggregating information .
Which brings me a couple other questions I have that I’ve mulling around, but to which you might have suggested a possible dotted line.
How long has Gruber been contracting with the government? We can only pull up records to 2000; was he doing work under contract before that time?
And who did Gruber go to school with prior to any contract work? This is where I might look to see if there was an academic relationship between Dr. Emanuel and/or other persons related to the administration — by which I mean the Clinton administration, since the earliest contract info we have at this time is circa 2000.
Rayne, what fabulous work. You will soon be known as as good in the weeds as EW. I had no idea about his having different entities for receiving payment/contracdting projects, etc.
Nope, either he has an excellent tax-avoidance accountant or atty, or he is nothing like the “ivory-tower academic” I first thought he might be, or that he claimed to be (somewhere read recently, not sure where).
I’ll have to take a look at some of these. No govt contract experience, but I can read legalese. (of course, I’m saying this before looking. Financial legalese can be awfully hard to follow if you don’t have the accounting background, which I don’t.) If I spot any smoking guns, I’ll be back. This post will be up for a few days, right?
Also, Zeke Emmanuel has a history of being affiliated with Massachusetts hospitals,as evidenced in the whorunsgov article
Ezekiel Emanuel – WhoRunsGov.com, a Wash Post CoJump to Universal Health-Care Vouchers: This isn’t Emanuel’s first time at the health-reform dance. … Emanuel, Ezekiel J., “Healthcare, Guaranteed,” New York: … According to Zeke, his chief of staff brother Rahm describes the …
http://www.whorunsgov.com › Profiles – 10 hours ago – Cached – Similar
NIH Clinical CenterWendler D, Emanuel EJ. What is a “minor” increase over minimal risk? J. Pediatrics 2005;147(5):575-578. Fuchs VR, Emanuel EJ. Health care reform: why? What? …
http://www.cc.nih.gov › About the Clinical Center › Senior Staff – Cached
Health Care Zeke: The other Emanuel – Carrie Budoff Brown …Feb 26, 2009 … Zeke Emanuel — Rahm’s big bro — is emerging as a key player in … be the chief kibitzer on health care reform and health care issues at the …
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19368.html – Cached – Similar
About four years ago, there was a push by NIH for its employees to NOT own stock in bio medical or pharma companies.
Emmanuel,aligned with AOS, intervened to protest this requirement.
Here’s some links:
There is no NIH Reputation Problem Bad Enough to Make Me Sell My …Feb 4, 2005 … And not all of these people in the NIH are susceptible to conflict of interest in the first place. Like Zeke Emanuel’s secretary. …
blog.bioethics.net/…/there-is-no-nih-reputation-problem-bad-enough-to-m/ – Cached
AOSEzekiel Emanuel, Chair, AOS Executive Committee …. It is our hope that the AOS—which lies outside the formal NIH chain of command and can work with the …
http://www.assemblyofscientists.org/ – Cached
Wonkette : Take Intern Juli’s Advanced Emanuel Brothers …Nov 10, 2008 … An NIH scientist who is a leader of the opposition to the new rules, Ezekiel [Zeke] Emanuel, says he was forced to sell stock valued at …
wonkette.com/…/take-intern-julis-advanced-emanuel-brothers-personality-test-from-hell – Similar
So, gitcheegummee – does that wonkette post mean that Zeke Emmanuel failed to change the rules?
Oh, I think we definitely need to look at academic links after reading your comments!
@8
The Carrie Budoff Brown Politico article is a must read. If you google Zeke Emanuel and excise tax you get a plethora of hits.A reference was made about EE being part of the Clinton administration.And just as-or more- impressively, delineates the deference and position EE held at the Orsagz HCR meeting last March at the White House.
There’s also an August,2008 Huff Po interview with EE where he asserts the same position as Gruber re: wages increasing. I will post.
@#7
I am unclear on that issue,myself,tr. But is is interesting to me that he precipitated such a pushback to begin with. We have all seen the tainting effects of big pharma in the ensuing years ,and most especially during these present conflict of interest issues.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Gruber household. Bet he can’t figure out what just hit him.
Btw, I read through a couple of Rayne’s links – they don’t really tell you much, do they? But that “not competed” sure does leap out at you.
And the definition of “nonprofit” comes to mind – like the “nonprofit debt consolidation companies,” methinks.
@#9
Here’s the Huff Po excerpt.
“When employers stop providing health insurance, workers’ wages will increase commensurately. Instead Americans would pay a dedicated Value Added Tax. ”
Sustainable Health Care Reform,July’08, Huff Po(Link to follow)
Ezekiel Emanuel: Sustainable Health Care ReformJul 24, 2008 … When it comes to health care reform, the question is no longer whether, … system problems but not both, it is not credible or sustainable. …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zeke-emanuel/sustainable-health-care-r_b_114788.html – Cached
@#7
You may want to check this out:
AOSIn February 2005, the NIH Assembly of Scientists was reconstituted, and elections were held for an Executive Committee. (A complete history of the AOS will …
http://www.assemblyofscientists.org/ – Cached
[PDF] Assembly of ScientistsFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
The Assembly of Scientists will elect 24 representatives to serve on the … The Assembly of Scientists members may ratify this Constitution and the …
http://www.assemblyofscientists.org/pdf/AOSBylaws2006.pdf
This one I believe has to do with consolidation in progress, and not complete. You can find the same thing with respect to federal grant FOAs (Funding Opportunity Announcements) going on at Grants.gov. There, NIH is conspicuously present, while other entities like DoD and NASA are very incomplete. When we inquired about this (w/resp to NASA), we were told that departments hadn’t really finished their work and that many didn’t consider it a top priority (unofficially).
Excellent post, excellent questions, excellent comments.
Let’s keep it going, folks.
Per capita income is ~40k.
This man is being made an aristocrat on the backs of the average person.
In partial answer of another of your questions, Jonathan Gruber is listed as a Research Associate of the non-profit organization National Bureau of Economic Research. It’s got a pretty large list of members. The grant that your link took me to was to NBER, and he is listed as the P.I. That isn’t the same thing as his sole proprietorship in Lexington, MA. NBER does list contact info, you could try writing to them.
Thanks for that.
Perfect example of an innocuous answer to one of the questions, which is just fine.
I’m still puzzling over how an individual can be a nonprofit, though.
Well, because we can’t see all his expenses we can’t be certain how many contract resources Gruber used to complete his work, I’m not prepared to say he’s stinking filthy rich.
Part of me says this because I am a consultant and my rates vary all over the map depending on the project; I can lose my butt on a “not to exceed” job if I have to contract others’ services AND I didn’t quote it properly.
But a six-digit contract for a single consultant with a staff of one still raises my eyebrows — especially since he could contract with the Clintons, the Bushies and now Obama.
If he is a non-profit, he must file 990s which can be researched at GuideStar or The Foundation Center.
yeah. perhaps the most prescient words of the 20th century: follow the fucking money.
But he’s only a 990 during 2009 — will those be on file yet, I wonder?
And there’s $281,697 to the same entities, Gruber and NBER in 2008 under project # 1R01AG031270-01 with the same title: CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCES IN THE MEDICARE PART D PLAN
Whew, there is a MOUNTAIN of data available. This is going to take quite some time.
Here’s his official resume from MIT
Johnathan Gruber Resume
This caught my eye:
Doesn’t it seem odd he was contracted in 2008 to work on Medicare D?
I need to double-check the NIH site for the dates of that contract; it could be it was still the 2008-2009 federal fiscal year when he was contracted but after Obama took office. You might even beat me to that info, let me know if you do.
No, I doubt it.
Nothing under Jonathan Gruber or Gruber, Jonathan on GuideStar, anyway.
Well that certainly explains why he was working for the Clinton administration as a consultant; they were very familiar with him.
So the next question: how’d end up becoming Deputy Asst. Sec?
What does everyone want to happen with this guy? What will it matter?
I for one would like to know WHO selected Gruber for this non compete contract, and perhaps following the money can be illuminating.
I am informed that NBER is a well-respected and known entity, similar to something like the Urban Institute, or Brookings or something. Not very assailable on financial data, probably. Probably want to look elsewhere.
I don’t personally care what happens to this guy.
What I care about is that our nation’s health care is both less expensive and universally accessible — that all Americans get health care and that we can pay for it through a redistribution of the more than ample funds we already pay.
I care that getting from where we are to where we must be is not screwed with by people who are pliant to the whims of corporations, corrupted elected or appointed officials. People are dying every day for the lack of health care in this country; the money we have invested in Mr. Gruber had better gawddamned well result in health care for all Americans and not increased profits for a limited number of corporations and their owners.
Do you need further clarification?
How would you compare this to Teapot Dome?
Unfortunately, we cannot make any assumptions.
There are a lot of think tanks, all of which have some sort of cred, good or bad depending on one’s POV along the political spectrum. Conservatives, for example, would say the same thing about AEI or Heritage Foundation.
We have to look at results, and so far the money spent has yielded conflicted results.
No, that’s helpful. Thanks
I wanted to add that the Wiki entry for Dr. Emanuel has a particularly interesting ,and somewhat ironic,section- towards the end- entitled “Conflicts of Interest”.
Rayne,
Don’t forget our health care dollars have also paid for the microsimulations run by the health care industry via The Lewin Group with an equally “paid for voice” of the Sr. VP of The Lewin Group, John Shiels.
All sides are creating concern on data, policy, politics and profit.
I can speak (a little) to the non-profit status and the HHS contracts, as well as the non-compete.
Regarding the non-profit
First, do not think of non-profits as anything other than a tax status. You have to meet certain requirements to be a tax-exempt non-profit (largely spelled out in section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code) but anyone can form a non-profit, including an individual.
A lot of HHS bureaucracies (all?) are only allowed to award contracts to non-profits. I believe this to be a good thing, as it increases transparency and decreases costs, but the morality of it is not relevant.
At my previous job, I worked on a couple Administration on Aging (AoA) contracts, and AoA (an HHS entity) only awards contracts to non-profits. A lot of the contracts are to elder-care or elder-law non-profits, but even individual experts such as actuaries and lawyers can also only be contracted through non-profits. A lot of them form non-profits to apply for the contracts, others are hired by non-profits who then apply for the contracts.
I am not sure the specifics of Gruber’s HHS contract, but there is a good chance that it was required to be awarded to a non-profit entity. Which would explain why there were two entities and two DUNS.
Regarding non-compete:
All of the contracts I worked on were also non-compete contracts. It is (perhaps surprisingly) common for highly specialized, recognized experts to get non-compete contracts. It is also much easier to get non-compete contracts if you have successfully completed previous contracts.
Non-compete contracts are not inherently a bad thing either. Competitive bidding is expensive, time consuming and in some (again, highly specialized) cases virtually impossible.
I do hope you keep digging, but I do not think there is anything sketchy about the non-profit and DUNS. I am not sure about the non-compete aspect of his contracts, there might be something there, but do realize they are common.
I just emailed one of their studies to EW. I’ll try to link to it here.
If you are talking only about Gruber, it’s small.
But if you take into consideration how big the forces working against health care reform and how they have managed to inveigle themselves into the policy making process, it’s pretty close.
- There are 3000 health care insurers across the country, and so far no real mechanism to ensure they compete fairly against each other to drive down costs while improving outcomes;
- As of mid-November, $600 million was spent by the health care industry to lobby against efforts to reform their industry. Doesn’t include monies spent by non-health care industry players like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
- And every day approx. 18 people die for lack of health care. The glacial pace of reform suggests that the lives of citizens are not a priority.
Did anybody die as direct result of the politics of the Teapot Dome scandal? I don’t think so.
So in relative terms, restating Teapot Dome $$ in current $$ and with lives at risk, I think the corruption dragging on health care reform is much bigger than Teapot Dome. Much.
Just for the record,here’s a bit of info-for the record- about NIH:(note the phrase COMPETITIVE grants)
The Nation’s Medical Research Agency
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. Composed of 27 Institutes and Centers, the NIH provides leadership and financial support to researchers in every state and throughout the world.
The NIH is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. With the headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, the NIH has more than 18,000 employees on the main campus and at satellite sites across the country.
With the support of the American people, the NIH annually invests over $28 billion in medical research. More than 83% of the NIH’s funding is awarded through almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 325,000 researchers at over 3,000 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state and around the world. About 10% of the NIH’s budget supports projects conducted by nearly 6,000 scientists in its own laboratories, most of which are on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
nih.gov
Thanks much for that feedback. Again, innocuous answers to questions from a person with knowledge. Good stuff.
How frequently are individuals operating as both for-profit and nonprofit entities, I wonder, especially when the the ultimate payer is the government?
Odd.
Yes, I was talking about Gruber.
As you alluded to and what needs to be emphasized is that questions are only questions and do not in any manner constitute evidence.
Harvard — Economics – Any folks in Treasury with that affiliation during the Clinton administration?
It’s more a matter of how the WH handled it than how Gruber handled it. Orzag has handled this blatantly unethically. However, I do wonder if there is contracting fraud on Gruber’s part. I looked Gruber up on the IRS non-profit website and it came up with nothing for him. It could spell problems for both the admin as well as Gruber if they engaged in contracting fraud in order to award Gruber a no-bid contract.
Jonathan Gruber Failed to Disclose His $392600 Contracts with HHSMIT health economist Jonathan Gruber has been the go-to source that all the health … Gruber is a well known and very public advocate for the excise tax. …
http://www.debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?p=1161206 – Cached
I am not sure if the description of his contract has been linked on this thread, but it is available at the link I posted above.
My understanding is that it says that no other models but Gruber’s fit DHHS requirements, and that the Gruber data was used for OTHER proposed reform…but I fail to see exactly WHICH reforms that they are referring to.
I just figured it’s all about Obama ‘catapulting the propaganda.’ And I sent such a message to the WH. Transparency, my ass.
@43
Yes, Larry Summers.
His Wiki states that he has ties to both MIT and Harvard-in addition to being Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton.
Hoo boy. Sic ‘em.
Great Questions!
Here are the question’s I’d recommend asking:
To get a sense of what’s considered reasonable and customary in the economics profession, see
“Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession” by Ryan Grim at HuffPo.
Summers has uncles who are Nobel laureates on both sides of his family: Kenneth Arrow is his mother’s brother, and Paul Samuelson is is father’s brother.
Thanks for the recommendations. Here’s a few links for some Summers background.
I am amazed at his openly expressed bias against women’s intellects-namely that they are inferior(!)I think that one cost him his position at Harvard as their President.
.S. Treasury – Biography of Secretary Lawrence SummersLawrence H. Summers was sworn in as the 71st Secretary of the Treasury in July 1999 after serving as Under Secretary for International Affairs and Deputy …
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/history/…/lhsummers.shtml – Cached – Similar
Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street’s ownership – Salon …Apr 4, 2009 … Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street’s ownership of government. By Glenn Greenwald. White House officials yesterday released their …
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/04/summers/ – Cached – Similar
How Larry Summers lost Harvard $1.8 billion | Analysis & Opinion …Nov 29, 2009 … Most people, if they’ve hired someone on a multi-million-dollar salary to look after investments and liquidity, would listen to the advice …
blogs.reuters.com/felix…/how-larry-summers-lost-harvard-18-billion/ – Cached
Re: Jonathan Gruber – Swampland – TIME.comJan 8, 2010 … Gruber, a one-time student of Larry Summers at Harvard, developed his … Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute …
swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/08/re-jonathan-gruber/ – Cached
Public finance and public policy – Google Books Resultby Jonathan Gruber – 2004 – Business & Economics – 718 pages
I am also grateful to Larry Summers for making it possible for me to work at the Treasury Department in 1997—1998; this experience gave me an appreciation …
books.google.com/books?isbn=0716786559…
This is all a tempest in a teapot. It is hard to make your way in a research money without getting grant money; the university skims a very large percentage of that grant to fund its ‘overhead’ (actually its current operations). It is almost impossible to be a health economist without asking for money from NIH, which is the widow’s cruse of funding. Otherwise you have to take drug money, like the doctors.
We can debate the pros and cons of his policies, but I don’t see anything here worth worrying about. This not like the economists who take huge consulting fees from banks (at $10,000 to $20,000 a day) to feed poisoned pablum to the public. There’s no comparison.
As to the Summers connection: at this level it is a very small world. I just received a Christmas card from a close friend who was Geithner’s mentor over at the Fed for years and years. It’s a family. Right or wrong, these people consider themselves public servants, which is a lot more than one can say for the hacks that populated the Bush administration.
A) What proof do you have that MIT skimmed any percentage let alone a large percentage?
B) Even if it is true that everyone and their brother get money from the NIH, how many people get called to go to the WH to meet with the OMB Director the very day they ink their contracts?
C) If this was just standard for his type of profession, how many contracts like this one did the Bush admin give Gruber?
D) If the Bush Admin wasn’t funding him, aren’t you saying he took drug money?
E) Aren’t you aware that the same hacks that were in the Bush Admin are now in the Obama Admin?
Yes. Same at Stanford, same at CMU,…
Public finance and public policy – Google Books Resultby Jonathan Gruber – 2004 – Business & Economics – 718 pages
I am also grateful to Larry Summers for making it possible for me to work at the Treasury Department in 1997—1998; this experience gave me an appreciation …
books.google.com/books?isbn=0716786559…
It is a VERY small world. You don’t know who you may be communicating with in these threads, for example.
I’m a consultant, have worked on business intelligence in the software industry. I have made a very nice living doing research on products many people here use.
And I don’t write about them, because I am very careful about the potential to violate proprietary information, because I am aware there are people who might misuse that information.
When I write about technology in which I have an investment, I make disclosure. It’s easy. It’s honest. It’s simply the right thing to do.
And in Gruber’s case, he could have and should have done that all along. It’s just not that hard. When one’s business makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year from one customer and that customer is the American public, it just shouldn’t be that difficult, like telling your neighbors, “Hey, I’m working for you, and I’m getting paid to do so, keep that in mind when you read my work that I’ve got a financial interest in this.”
The biggest problem I have with Gruber is we are paying him, and yet he hasn’t released full results of his “microsimulation” analysis of the current health reform legislation. Given how eager he is to produce numbers favorable to reform, the fact that that he hasn’t disclosed full results makes me think the numbers are bad. As in for example, employers will dump insurance without a strong employer mandate, or lots of people will remain uninsured and have to pay the penalty, or it will cost much more than expected. These are answers which the public–who’ve shelled out at least $400,000 for Gruber’s services–deserve to know.
Not often I have an opportunity to cite something from this rag, but I thought this was a fair representation of how people feel about the bill nationally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/health/policy/11health.html?hp
And the longer it’s out there, the more wary people are becoming…They’d feel a whole lot different if it had a public option, I bet. Even an eviscerated one.
Great Article. The government should stop funding any academic work…all grants coming from taxpayers should just be nixed. Neither Economists, nor scientists, nor historians or artists have any business getting money from the government….
Here’s some more thoughts fromtheright:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/09/is-gruber-the-armstrong-williams-of-the-obama-administration/
I agree. There’s something wrong when a guy is on the CBO health care advisory committee AND a highly paid consultant to the Obama administration. That’s not checks and balances. That’s an expensive echo chamber.
After all if you can’t get the truth from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup – CIGNA or Aetna then it must be a fib.
Excellent point. Taxpayers have paid for the simulation: show us the product.
We’re not asking for the software, we’re just asking for the inputs used, the trendline as it’s crunched, and the outputs.
And maybe let us make up our own mind about the outputs instead of telling us what they say.
A very good question is whether he has released the simulator itself?
Science runs on independent verification of results by peer researchers. Results should be reproducable. Do other researchers around the world have access to his simulator and are they getting similar results? Otherwise, he could be making shit up, which isn’t good science.
I had wondered how you knew so much about various software products. ;-)
wigwam (65) — I don’t think I’d actually expect him to release the “simulator” if he’s written code for this process.
But he should be able to give all inputs and explain in general terms how the outputs are generated so that the process could be validated by other economists who do comparable simulation work.
I see Paul Krugman is saying that Firedoglake is making a mountain out of a molehill and that Gruber is “the top micro-modeling expert, and getting this stuff right is more important than this essentially trivial controversy.”
I hope this doesn’t mean that Gruber’s work should be the ONLY model used, and that other modeling which conflicts with Grubers shouldn’t be considered or used to find flaws in Gruber’s model and encourage improved analysis.
Health care reform is simply too gawddamned big, has far too many actual human lives on the line let alone the future of our economy riding on it, for the American public to bet it all on one economist’s modeling — and an economist who’s sloppy enough not to make disclosures on a regular and systematic basis.
Here is the description of the contract:
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), intends to negotiate with Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. on a sole sources basis for technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform. The basis for restricting competition is the authority of 41 USC 253(c)(1) 106-1(b) because there is only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy DHHS requirements. The anticipated contract period will be eight months.
ASPE requires a technical memorandum on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform. The requirement includes developing estimates of various health reform proposals on health insurance coverage and cost. The alternative specifications to be considered will be derived from the President’s health reform proposal. This project is a continuation of work that Dr. Gruber is currnetly providing for ASPE.
Dr. Gruber is uniquely positioned to provide the analytic work ASPE requires based on over 15 years of experience in health care and health policy. Dr. Gruber is a recognized expert in health policy in economics including being widely published in peer-reviewed academic and health policy literature on the effects of changes in health benefit designs on the cost of enrollment in health insurance. Moreover, in order to estimate the impacts, Dr. Gruber developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model that has the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy. This model has been used for other health reform proposal.
Finally, Dr. Gruber’s ongoing work with ASPE, using these proprietary models to help inform the Office of Health Reform, strongly positions him to meet HHS’ requirements the most efficiently, which is a key requirement in order for well-developed legislative proposals to be put forth for Congressional consideration as soon as possible.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/201…56/1847/73#c73
NOTE: Are there NO other academics who are capable of providing a competitive product?
Your link is broken, can you try to embed it this time?
Highlight a word in a new post, click on the icon which looks like chain link, insert the URL into the popup and click okay.
Here’s where I originally found it:
Jonathan Gruber Failed to Disclose His $392600 Contracts with HHSMIT health economist Jonathan Gruber has been the go-to source that all the health … Gruber is a well known and very public advocate for the excise tax. …
http://www.debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?p=1161206 – Cached
Here’s the prettied-up DKos link.
@71
H/T to you! Thanks.