Moreover, in order to estimate the impacts, Dr. Gruber developed a proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model that has the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy. This model has been used for other health reform proposal.
Dollars to donuts this guy developed his "proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model" using public funding and contracts. Then he charges the government $400,000 a crack to change a few parameters in the model and spit it back at them.
Even better, no one else has a "proprietary statistically sophisticated micro-simulation model" so no one can question his results. This is what allows him to get multi-million dollar no-bid government contracts.
Sound familiar? It should. It's the same scam run by the climate-alarm industry.
I worked in a University System for 30 years and as a researcher, I was required each year to complete Conflict of Interest documentation detailing all, if any, of my outside activities. I was also required to sign acknowledgements that my work for the System had intellectual property aspects which are OWNED by the University.
I find all these personal (by name) consulting contracts totaling in the millions, and the outright sale of this “model” incredible. I’d be willing to bet he subverted both COI and IP regulations at MIT (who would be stupid NOT to control them). My guess is the MIT brass have already been through his dealings and they’ve concluded to themselves he violated their procedures and regulations. Whether they do anything about it is a political problem now. But you can be he’s been called before the higher echelon there and been reamed out about it.
The next thing that should really happen is a full GAO audit of the rate of compensation he received and what the subcomponents are. My guess is all that was glossed over and approved unaudited. IOW, I bet he can’t substantiate what his labor rates, overhead, and all the other components are. A rough guess is these $400K Model charges are based on a year’s worth of his time burdened with overhead, etc. The kicker comes if there are multiple similar contracts for different states AT THE SAME TIME, i.e., how can he, working on one delivery essentially full time, work on others similarly. It smacks of fraud to me.
GOP should do some digging, let the GAO get in his britches and see what all these contracts really shake out to be.