How the “Stupid” American Public Pays for Gruber’s Deception

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The Washington Times points out that Jonathan Gruber, our nation’s most famous sufferer of foot-in-mouth-disease, has profited greatly from the “stupid” American public to whom he felt the need to lie in order to pass his health care reform. In an editorial, the paper details the nearly $300,000 paycheck Gruber received from the Department of Health and Human Services to “sing the praises of the health care scheme.”

And that’s not all. Several states—including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, West Virginia, Maine, Colorado, and Oregon—used Obamacare grants to pay Gruber millions of dollars for his services.

Outrageous? Yes. But should we really be surprised?  

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) routinely pays researchers with certain biases to produce “evidence” for positions NIH wants to push on the American public. Essentially, NIH pays to create propaganda with taxpayer money in order to lobby state and federal governments into changing the law as it wants.

For example, Dr. David Jernigan, an admitted “advocate” at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has received upwards of $8 million from NIH since 2009 to produce studies demonstrating the evils of alcohol consumption and marketing (his research has been highly criticized by other public health academics).

In 2013, NIH awarded a grant of $650,000 a year for five years to the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group to study the effects of privatizing alcohol sales in Washington State. The leader of the project, Dr. William Kerr, has written and spoken many times in the past about his firm stance against the privatization of alcohol sales, which he believes will result in increased drinking and greater costs to the state.

And of course, NIH has also spent millions funding the work of Jonathan Gruber—more than $3.5 million since 1994, of which $1.5 million has been paid out in just the last four years. 

The “stupid” American public has been very generous to Jonathan Gruber. Most likely, he believes the benefits of passing the ACA will far outweigh the scheming and lies necessary to force it upon the nation. After all, he did it for our own good.