Gruber: 'I'm embarrassed and I'm sorry'

WASHINGTON—Embattled professor Jonathan Gruber on Tuesday apologized for his “insulting and mean comments” regarding the Affordable Care Act and its implementation, but he defended the law and downplayed his role in crafting it.

“I’m embarrassed and I’m sorry,” Gruber told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “My flaws as a private citizen should not reflect on any process by which the ACA was passed, or any success of that law.”

The hearing came after a series of videos surfaced showing Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, making blunt assertions, including that Obamacare was written in a “tortured way” to avoid having it scored as a tax and that it took advantage of the “stupidity of the American voter.” Gruber’s comments led to myriad fact checks. Democrats tried desperately to distance themselves from the prominent healthcare economist.

Gruber, widely called a key architect of the law, on Tuesday tried furiously to put out the fires his comments ignited, repeatedly apologizing and denouncing his “glib” remarks as outside his area of expertise. He said the remarks weren’t lies and spent four hours disputing them, saying he didn’t remember them and repeating rehearsed, evasive answers. He also refused to say how much he earned in government contracts.

“It does appear that you have advanced in your ability to be political,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., sparking laughter in the hearing room.

When Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, asked Gruber to confirm that the individual mandate is, in fact, a tax, in accordance with his prior statements, he hedged, then flip-flopped. Gruber acknowledged “there are some taxes” in Obamacare. But upon further grilling, he said he disagrees with the 2012 Supreme Court decision that upheld the mandate as a tax.

One of Gruber’s most controversial past comments—and potentially the most consequential—regarded the requirement that states establish their own healthcare exchanges to be eligible to offer tax subsidies to enrollees. The Supreme Court is scheduled this term to take up a challenge to the subsidies, and the plaintiffs have cited Gruber’s comments as proof that only residents participating in state-run, not federally run, exchanges can receive subsidies.

On Tuesday, Gruber backtracked, saying his comments were taken out of context. He said his 2012 remarks were only regarding a hypothetical scenario in which the government would not set up a federal exchange: “We didn’t even know who the president would be.”

In his opening statement, Gruber, who calls himself a “card-carrying Democrat,” insisted he believes the ACA was passed in a transparent way, although his past statements were more about the substance of the law than the political process. He denied the law conceals taxes, but he did not deny it shifts cost, as he stated in a previous remark, “healthy people pay in and sick people get money.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pointed out that Gruber testified before Congress in support of Obamacare without disclosing the government money he was receiving to advise the administration as it wrote the law. “That’s deception at his highest form,” Jordan said.

Marilyn Tavenner, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also appeared before the committee for the first time since September, when she told the panel more than 7 million Americans enrolled in healthcare plans. At the outset of the hearing, Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., blasted Tavenner, who said the accidental inclusion of almost 400,000 dental plans was an honest mistake. She largely escaped the kind of tough questions directed at Gruber and repeatedly said she didn’t have information with her.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee’s ranking member, said he was frustrated with Gruber’s “absolutely stupid” comments and Tavenner’s mistake because they both distract from the positive aspects of the law.

While Gruber attempted to dismiss his prior comments, The Heritage Foundation’s Ed Haislmaier, a health-policy expert who served on a panel with Gruber earlier this year, told me they are “pretty typical” of liberal elites. “There are plenty of folks in health policy on the left who believe the same way,” he said.

Outside the Capitol on Tuesday, Tea Party Patriots volunteers passed out free T-shirts reading, “I’m with stupid” above a picture of Gruber. “Free T-shirts,” said Kevin Broughton of Woodstock, Ga., “If you like your T-shirt you can keep it!”