Jonathan Gruber’s ill-advised, indefensible and arrogant language is just what Gov.
Peter Shumlin does not need as he prepares to unveil plans for a long-awaited single-payer health care program that would be a pioneering step for the state and nation.
Gruber is the economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was captured on video making statements about the “stupidity” of the American people and the lack of transparency required to slip health care reform past them.
Gruber has been a consultant for the Obama administration and for a number of states, including Vermont, on health care reform. He was hired by the Shumlin administration to use economic models to analyze the potential impact on the state’s economy of a variety of options for financing the single-player plan known as Green Mountain Care. His contract calls for him to be paid $450,000, including $50,000 for a subcontractor. About 90 percent of his work is complete.
Shumlin has not tried to defend Gruber’s statements. Rather, he expressed “dismay and outrage” about the comments, saying he was irked not so much that Gruber said what he said but that he thought it. Shumlin said he was “shocked.”
He pointed out, “It’s our plan, not his. It’s our policy, our hope for the future, our plan.” He said Gruber had no role in shaping the plan or giving policy advice. He had been hired merely as a “calculator” to run the numbers to see how diverse policy options affected the state’s economy.
Republicans have leaped on Gruber’s comments, demanding that he be fired. A letter from three GOP House members — Heidi Scheuermann, Patti Komline and Kurt Wright — said Shumlin’s failure to terminate Gruber’s contract “will only further erode Vermonters’ confidence in a process that has already left much to be desired.” In separate comments, Wright alluded to the “razor-thin margin” by which Shumlin won re-election this month and said retaining Gruber would further undermine confidence in Shumlin’s leadership.
Shumlin’s narrow victory over Scott Milne has raised questions about his ability to command support for his single-payer plan, and Gruber’s comments don’t help. Essentially, Republicans are charging that Gruber’s comments show the Obama administration was intent on foisting a health care plan on the American people, and that they had to develop it in the dark because the people were too stupid to understand it.
It is important, however, to consider who is foisting what on whom. Republican leaders who have tried to torpedo Obamacare and have refused to accept expanded Medicaid are trying to foist on their people a system that deprives them of health care and produces levels of health poorer than in other developed nations. Cynical ideologues of the Republican Party are the ones treating the American people as if they are stupid, opposing programs that have benefited millions of people by providing them with health care coverage for the first time.
Shumlin says Gruber’s economic models are crucial for analyzing the potential impacts of varied options on the state’s economy. Indeed, a sophisticated understanding of the complex tax effects under consideration is essential to marshal support for the program and for the success of the program once it is launched.
Indignation over Gruber’s remarks is in order, but state policymakers need not undermine their own efforts to indulge their disapproval of Gruber’s verbiage. If they need him for his expertise, they can keep him on until his work is done and then let him go his merry way.
For Shumlin, Gruber’s words provide an unfortunate echo. Shumlin himself has employed a lack of transparency to allow himself the freedom to develop a plan without the public looking over his shoulder — an approach apparently endorsed by Gruber. Public backlash against Shumlin’s method found expression in the recent election, and now a backlash at Gruber’s remarks ought to show Shumlin that the public is ready for some transparency at long last.