Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admitted to his pricey consulting contracts with the Obama administration in a November 2013 email obtained by The Daily Caller.
The email represents the first time that Gruber confirmed what he claimed was the extent of his federal consulting work during the Obama administration — information that is under subpoena after Gruber refused to fork it over in a recent congressional hearing.
Gruber previously concealed his federal contracts during the period in which the White House and the establishment media was promoting his supposedly independent research to help sell Obamacare to Congress.
Gruber also refused to tell the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a hearing how much he made as a consultant to the administration, or what his contracts entailed, saying, “I have all sorts of documents. I have paper in front of me.” (RELATED: Gruber Lawyers Up)
Gruber recently lost his job at the firm Picwell, which plans to advise state Obamacare exchanges on people’s choices, after his comments calling the American people “stupid” and saying that seniors “do a terrible job choosing” went viral. (RELATED: Gruber On The Stupidity of the American Voter)
Oversight chairman Rep. Darrell Issa subpoenaed all of Gruber’s Obamacare-related documents, including his federal contracts.
So how much is Gruber, who received numerous contracts from the Clinton and Bush administrations and the government-funded National Bureau of Economic Research, claiming that he got from the Obama administration?
Gruber claimed that he currently has “No federal contracts” in an email exchange with journalist Evan Gahr, which was obtained by TheDC. “I was a technical consultant to the Obama administration for the contracts reported below, but I have had no contracts since,” Gruber wrote.
Here is the contract Gruber confirmed:
Gruber received $297,600 from the Department of Health and Human Services in a contract awarded on June 19, 2009.
“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,” stated a federal government database. “The anticipated contract period will be eight months.”
The contract was deemed a “continuation” of work Gruber was already providing to the department.
“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,” according to the database. “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 currently providing for ASPE.”
Wait a second? “Continuation of work that Dr. Gruber is currently providing?”
It turns out that Gruber received $95,000 as part of this contract before it was even officially awarded, and the $95,000 was apparently not reported on available federal government databases.
A Health and Human Services official said that all of Gruber’s contracts were reported but did not specify where a record of the $95,000 could be found.
As for the assignment that his contract laid out, Gruber did not exactly do a bang-up job.
Gruber later admitted that he never had any clue as to how to control costs in the health care law and that President Obama lied to the American people when he said that the law would control costs. (RELATED: Gruber Admitted Obama Lied About Costs)
