FOXNews.com - Economist Was Under Contract With HHS While Touting Health Reform Bill

FOXNews.com - Economist Was Under Contract With HHS While Touting Health Reform Bill: "MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the leading academic defenders of health care reform, is taking heat for failing to disclose consistently that he was under contract with the Department of Health and Human Services while he was touting the Democrats' health proposals in the media.

Gruber, according to federal government documents, is under a $297,600 contract until next month to provide 'technical assistance' in evaluating health care reform proposals. He was under a $95,000 HHS contract before that.

But while he was being paid to provide his services to HHS, he was also fending off health care reform critics in the media. Gruber was one of the prominent analysts to rebut an insurance industry report from PricewaterhouseCoopers in October saying premiums would shoot up if a health care bill passes. And he has recently written columns defending specific provisions in the House and Senate bills, particularly the 'Cadillac tax' on high-cost insurance plans.

The liberal base of the Democratic Party is widely opposed to that tax, out of fear that it will cut into union benefits -- which may explain why the first criticism of Gruber came out of liberal blogs.

'I have never seen it disclosed that he was a paid consultant to the Obama administration,' a blogger for Firedoglake wrote Friday morning. 'For months I have been angry with Gruber because I thought he was simply an exaggerator whose dangerous love of the spotlight was hurting the efforts of progressives to make sure the Senate bill adopted more progressive cost control solutions. ... Now it is clear something much more sinister was at play.'"