Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

An ongoing plea to think twice, and even three times, before buying into the wonders of central planning and/or technocrats more broadly stands as one of the underlying themes of JPGB. Given that we primarily discuss American education policy here, and that if rules, regulations and earnest bureaucrats were a solution America would long ago ceased to have had K-12 problems, this ought not to require elaboration. Technocrats sadly have a funny habit of either exacerbating problems or creating new problems under the best of circumstances. At their worst, such people hide behind a false cloak of science in order to boss other people around while rationalizing away their ill effects in the name of some higher good. Each year we honor a select few of such people with a Higgy nomination.

It is my distinct pleasure therefore to nominate Jonathan Gruber for the 2015 Higgy.

It is no accident that the two broad fields with the heaviest government funding and regulation- education and health- have seen a truly incredible combination of rampant cost inflation in return for nebulous quality improvements. No one in their right mind would voluntarily pay higher prices for dubious quality improvments- only a truly convoluted system of indirect payment could deliver such an outcome. Health care comes with some additional difficulties of price inelastic demand (“nah don’t even try life saving heart surgery I don’t want to pay that much” is not a phrase often heard in America) and information asymmetries between doctors and patients.

In the end of the day the demand for health care exceeds our ability to supply it, which raises the difficult subject of rationing. There are two general methods for rationing a scarce good or service- by price or by bureaucrat. Europeans long ago embraced bureaucratic methods in various ways. The United States however created a hybrid system that in essence denied the need to choose in creating a convoluted system of tax subsidies and public programs that led to decades of rampant cost inflation. In the immortal words of the late Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, America became the only country dedicated to the proposition that death is optional. The American left yearns for a European system but must face an American health care culture (largely of their own creation) that has operated without any type of rationing for many decades.

All of this predates Dr. Gruber, but Gruber has been deeply involved in fashioning both state and federal public policies designed to double down on third-party payers in order to treat a symptom of America’s health care dysfunction. Rampant and long-lasting health care inflation far above that in the consumer price index has, needless to say, made insurance more expensive. Increasing the price of any good or service decreases the pool of people able and willing to purchase it. Thus the percentage of those carrying insurance has been in decline, and the cost of private and public insurance programs have steadily increased.

What to do? How about a fine to compel people to buy health insurance? This of course would do nothing about the underlying problem per se, so Gruber and company engaged in an elaborate deception in the “Affordable Care Act.” CNN helpfully ran down several of Gruber’s greatest hits:

Gruber’s gloating on video regarding the various deceptions of Obamacare deservedly generated deep hostility manipulation of the scoring of the bill: obfuscation of the use of taxes, an attempt to obscure what amounts to a massive transfer of wealth. Gruber’s gleeful recounting of just how clever in deception Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration had been represents a damning indictment all its own.

Jonathan Gruber perfectly symbolizes the dangers of “scientific progressivism” in my mind because by Gruber’s own admission very little has been done to address the real underlying problem.  In one of his videos, Gruber laments the fact that it was necessary to pretend to “bend the cost curve” and name the bill the “affordable care act” because controlling costs represents an overwhelming concern while expanding coverage to the uninsured does not. It was necessary to deceive the American public, you see, because the American public lacks virtue and cares more about controlling costs than expanding coverage.

The unwashed masses seem to understand much more clearly than our MIT technocrat that controlling costs represents the only sustainable method for expanding access to care. Expanding coverage cannot and will not be sustained without addressing the fundamental issue of rampant cost inflation.  The United States of America had trillions of dollars in unfunded entitlement liabilities before Gruber and company began their campaign of deception in order to transfer wealth and extend coverage while doing very little about cost.  “We’ll get to that part later” on cost control represents a sickening level of irresponsibility that treats a symptom (lack of health insurance) rather than the cause (decades of cost inflation).  Gruber and our other health technocrats would like us to trust them they will address this more difficult issue of cost containment later.  This after conclusively proving that no one should ever trust anything that comes out of their mouths ever again.

William F. Buckley famously noted that he would rather be ruled by the first 1,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. Our elites routinely display horrible judgement and a sense of entitlement to make decisions for those whom they judge to be in need of their benevolent guidance. Plato had it all wrong in the Republic, would-be “philosopher kings” deserve our unrelenting skepticism. Voluntary exchange drives human progress and innovation, not allegedly well-meaning busy bodies concealing their lies and deceptions behind a lab coat as they attempt to better order our lives for us.