Jonathan Holmes Gruber (born September 30, 1965) is an American professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992.
His father is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business, having taught there for more than 40 years.
During the 1997–98 academic year, Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the United States Department of the Treasury.
[14] In 2010 and 2011, Gruber was involved in crafting and advocating for the Single-Payer and Unified Health System bill in Vermont, which passed in May 2011.
Green Mountain Care was cancelled in December 2014 by Governor Peter Shumlin saying its projected costs were becoming too high.
In both 2006 and 2012 he was rated as one of the top 100 most powerful people in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.
In response to Krugman's contention, Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote, "What will make it impossible to effectively call out wrongdoing by future corrupt administrations (by which Krugman seems to mean: Republican administrations) is the willingness of some people to tolerate and defend corruption when done by 'their side.
'"[31] One heavily scrutinized part of the ACA reads that subsidies should be given to healthcare recipients who are enrolled "through an Exchange established by the State".
[35] In the first, most widely publicized video, taken at a panel discussion about the ACA at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2013, Gruber said the bill was deliberately written "in a tortured way" to disguise the fact that it creates a system by which "healthy people pay in and sick people get money".
[37][38][39] As a result, a contract he had with the office of the Auditor of North Carolina to assist in auditing a Medicaid program was terminated.
[43] Journalist Jake Tapper noted that Gruber's description of the "Cadillac tax" directly contradicted a promise that Obama had made before the bill was passed.
[45][46] Opponents of the Act, on the other hand, were harsher in their criticism: National Review Online editor and conservative commentator Rich Lowry said the videos were emblematic of "the progressive mind, which values complexity over simplicity, favors indirect taxes and impositions on the American public so their costs can be hidden, and has a dim view of the average American",[47] while commentator Charles Krauthammer called the first video "the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.
Cupp wrote that the videos showed "willful ignorance" on Gruber's part in thinking that the Act was successfully marketed to voters, stating that "the law has never cracked a 51% favorability rating" and that, in the first elections after the ACA passed, Republicans, who had opposed it, retook the House of Representatives and gained control of 11 additional state governorships.
[51][52] The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, called Gruber's apology unpersuasive, saying that "his response to substantive questions suggested that he is mainly sorry for getting caught on tape".
[57] The extent of Gruber's contributions to both Massachusetts and federal health care reform has been the source of significant controversy.
[58] According to emails released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee to The Wall Street Journal, Gruber met and consulted with various Obama administration officials in charge of writing and developing the law,[58] including Peter Orszag, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Jason Furman, an economic adviser to the president, Ezekiel Emanuel, who was then a special adviser for health policy at OMB, Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama administration health adviser who worked at HHS and the White House, and Lawrence Summers, then a top economic adviser in the administration.