Remember Sustinet, Connecticut’s $1 billion-plus plan to combine Medicaid, state employee health plans and a government-run health insurer?
In 2010, MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber performed modeling for the Sustinet plan. Gruber, considered an architect of Obamacare, is in the news because of recently-uncovered video of him calling out the “stupidity of the American voter.”
The video shows Gruber explaining why the Obamacare legislation couldn’t say what it actually did, because then it wouldn’t pass.
Gov. Dannel Malloy’s transition team report on healthcare from four years ago includes a presentation on Sustinet with the results of Gruber’s work.
Sustinet failed when many state employees questioned the concept of combining their health plan with Medicaid and asked whether the union leaders pushing the plan were looking out for the best interest of the rank and file.
Gruber earned nearly $400,000 from the federal government and significant sums from other states, although the amount paid by Connecticut is not public. The Sustinet board used nonprofits to pay for its research which allowed it to skirt transparency rules.