Obamacare has decimated elected Democrats around the country but it's been good for at least one person: Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has been paid millions of dollars as a "consultant" for the federal government and numerous state governments. It's pretty offensive that a person with such little respect for the American public has so flagrantly enriched himself at the public trough.
Those "stupid" people have been extremely generous to Mr. Gruber. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2010 investigated the $297,600 that the Department of Health and Human Services paid Mr. Gruber to sing the praises of the health care scheme. Congress -- or part of Congress -- was concerned that this payoff violated a federal law against paid government propaganda, but the GAO said it wasn't a violation because Mr. Gruber had written his propaganda on his own time. Officially, he was paid only to "analyze various health care reform proposals and identify cost and coverage implications."This is an extraordinarily lucrative enterprise in the age of Obamacare that Mr. Gruber himself brought about. Individual states have lavished taxpayer cash on Mr. Gruber in return for cookie-cutter reports that describe the impact of Obamacare for each of the several states.
Minnesota, for example, used federal Obamacare grants to pay Mr. Gruber to attend one meeting, participate in a biweekly email list and print a copy of the report, all for $329,000. Wisconsin paid Mr. Gruber $400,000 for the same material, requested by the office of then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. When the report was presented, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, didn't want Mr. Gruber at the news conference. Vermont is paying him another $400,000. Such a deal!
Or, if you prefer a more acerbic conclusion, taxpayers paid Jonathan Gruber in the mid-six-figures to lie to them, and then brag about it to all of his friends and fans later.
