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Jonathan Gruber

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Economist

The Resume

    (September 30, 1965- )
    Economics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research
    Key architect of the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform ('Romneycare')
    Key architect of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, or 'Obamacare')
    Associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Health Economics
    Author of 'Public Finance and Public Policy' and 'Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works'
    Became the subject of controversy after several videos surfaced of him speaking dismissively about the ACA at different events between 2010 to 2013 ('Grubergate'; Nov. 2014)

Why he might be annoying:

    He shares a surname with a 'Die Hard' villain played by Alan Rickman.
    He expressed doubts that the ACA would actually lower healthcare costs, while admitting that this was a key point made towards selling it to the public.
    He denied being a key architect of Mitt Romney's signature health care law, despite having authored a 160-page comic book with John Kerry to explain it to the public.
    His presence served as an inconvenience toward Romney during his 2012 Presidential run, as he attempted to distance himself from his own mandate and ran on the promise to repeal Obamacare (Gruber repeatedly surfaced to criticize him for denying that the two programs were interchangeable).
    He was caught on video bragging about how 'lack of transparency' and 'the stupidity of the American voter' were political assets toward passing Obamacare.
    The scandal led major Democrat figures to throw him under the bus, including Nancy Pelosi, David Axelrod, and even President Obama, who wrote him off as 'just some advisor who never worked on our staff' (which was patently false).
    He suggested during a CNN interview that 'the fix' to the ACA law's unpopularity was a larger mandate penalty fee to increase the number of enrollees (Oct. 26, 2016).
    When he was confronted by Chris Wallace about premium hikes, and the fact that insurance companies were dropping out of the ACA's Healthcare Marketplace, he responded that it was the 'fault' of President Donald Trump, insisting that it was 'working fine' until Trump 'undercut the enrollment' and 'reneged on the obligations Obamacare made to insurers' (May 2017).
    He was barred from working as a taxpayer-funded economic consultant in Vermont, after settling a case with the state attorney general's office following a two-year billing fraud investigation tied to his work with the failed Green Mountain Care single-payer system (Aug. 20, 2017).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He graduated from MIT with a degree in Economics (1987).
    He completed a PhD in Economics from Harvard (1992).
    He was a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
    He received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under (2006).
    He was named one of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time by Slate Magazine (2006).
    He was named the 19th most powerful person in US health care by Modern Healthcare magazine (2006; 2012).
    He apologized for his 'transparency' remarks, during a testimony before Congress, calling them 'glib, thoughtless, and sometimes downright insulting.'
    He was called out by Donald Trump during his infamous Phoenix rally, who taunted 'did you see Gruber got fired yesterday? He got fired because he defrauded somebody or something. Something very bad happened. Check it out. Something happened' - which is technically false since - while publicly disgraced - he wasn't actually 'fired' (Aug. 23, 2017).

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 132 Votes: 59.85% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 8 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 67 Votes: 65.67% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 34 Votes: 32.35% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 30 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 145 Votes: 58.62% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 237 Votes: 83.12% Annoying