Yet More Non-Transparency from the Obama Administration…
In case you haven’t seen it, Fox News and other media outlets have reported that MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber failed to disclose nearly $400,000 in contracts he received from the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in the multitude of news stories in which he has been quoted this year. For instance, Gruber wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post just last week highlighting the benefits of the “Cadillac tax” on health plans – one of the most controversial elements of the Senate health care bill – yet failed to disclose his lucrative consulting contracts with the Obama Administration in that article.
When independent studies commissioned by various insurance companies demonstrated the higher premiums resulting from health “reform,” Democrats attacked the conclusions as being “bought and paid for” by the industry. By contrast, when Dr. Gruber published pieces supporting President Obama’s government takeover of health care, he disclosed his paid relationships with that Administration only “when asked,” perhaps in order to avoid the same type of conflict-of-interest questions that Democrats so vigorously pursued against insurance companies – as well as a reprise of the charges of Administration-paid propaganda that Democrats leveled against the Department of Education back in 2005. Apparently C-SPAN needs to cover more than just the closed-door health care negotiations, but also the way this government takeover of health care may be being publicly advertised through taxpayer dollars…