MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has been a paid consultant for Vermont as it develops a single-payer health care system under Obamacare, but the state is cutting off his payments after the recent revelations about his past controversial statements.
The Burlington Free Press reported on Wednesday that Gruber had been working on a contract worth up to $400,000 to perform economic modeling for the state, the same kind of work he had done for the Obama administration as the Affordable Care Act was being drafted.
Gruber and the graduate students assisting him had submitted $200,000 in invoices and been paid $160,000. But Vermont’s chief health care reform official said that the state wouldn’t pay Gruber any more money after his comments on “the stupidity of the American voter” garnered national headlines.
The state still expects Gruber to finish his work, the official, Lawrence Miller, said, according to the Free Press.
“I have told Mr. Gruber that I expect his team to complete the work that we need to provide the legislature and Vermonters with a public health care financing plan,” Miller said in the statement. “I’ve informed Mr. Gruber that that we will not be paying him any further for his part in completing that work.”
Gruber was being paid $500 per hour; his graduate assistants receive $100. Miller told the Free Press that the students would continue to be paid.
“Graduate students are not the problem,” he said.
“As (Gov. Peter Shumlin) and I have said, the comments by Mr. Gruber are offensive, inappropriate and do not reflect the thinking of this administration or how we do things in Vermont,” Miller said in the statement, adding, however: “We need solid economic modeling in order to move forward with health care reform.”
