Gruber Update

Jane Hamsher posts a fascinating timeline of Jonathan Gruber's influence on the health reform debate here. I don't share her outrage; I think it would have been irresponsible for the administration to have proposed a major reform of the health care system without getting detailed input from people like Jon. He should have been more forthcoming about his contractual arrangement with HHS, but I honestly don't think his analyses would have been any different if MIT had paid for them. A key reason why I think so is that professors at universities, as opposed to those in think tanks or private consulting firms (i.e., "beltway bandits"), have professional reputations to maintain. Generally speaking, this strongly discourages them from just saying whatever they are paid to say about an issue by some special interest. Of course there are exceptions, but only a fool would risk tenure at a major university like MIT for a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

That said, Hamsher's article offers interesting insight into the way politicians, the media and analysts interact with each other over controversial legislative initiatives. Without endorsing Jane's conclusions, I think her analysis is very good and the sort of thing that I wish were done more often.