The controversial Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber made millions from taxpayers at both the state and federal level - the same American taxpayers Gruber insulted multiple times.
Fox News reviewed a number of state and federal websites, along with published reports, and found that Gruber, an MIT economist, and his firm have received millions in government contracts over the past 15 years.
Gruber made nearly $400,000 from two Department of Health and Human Services contracts in 2009. The contract asked for a "series of technical memoranda on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform."
A contract from the National Institutes of Health has netted more than $2 million since 2007, reports Fox News, and the Department of Justice paid Gruber nearly $1.74 million for his help developing incentives to dissuade tobacco companies from targeting teen smokers.
When Gruber provided his services as an expert witness to the State Department, where he provided testimony in a NAFTA dispute, he was awarded $103,500.
And that's just at the federal level. According to The Washington Post, at least eight states hired Gruber to assist with the launch of health care exchanges. The standard going rate for access to the Gruber Microsimulation Model, according to the Post, is roughly $400,000.
Additionally, Fox News found that Gruber's firm "shared in a $481,050 contract with Michigan, a $400,000 deal with Wisconsin, and a contract with Minnesota worth nearly $300,000. Other contracts included deals with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming."
A number of controversial videos recently emerged of Gruber speaking between 2010 and 2013 regarding the Affordable Care Act. In the videos, Gruber refers to American voters as "stupid" and ill-informed. In one video, Gruber stated that Obamacare was deliberately written in a non-transparent way to avoid having the mandate labeled as a tax and was successful due to "the stupidity of the American voter."
