This is a double standard that has corroded much of the coverage ofObamaCare, with journalists treating government claims as oracular butbusiness arguments as self-serving.
The press corps is agonizing, or claims to be agonizing, over thenews of Jonathan Gruber’s conflict of interest: The MIT economist hasbeen among the foremost promoters of ObamaCare—even as he had nearly$400,000 in consulting contracts with the Administration that weren’tdisclosed in the many stories in which he was cited as an independentauthority.
Mr. Gruber is a health economist and former Clinton Treasury hand,as well an architect of Mitt Romney’s 2006 health plan in Massachusettsthat so closely resembles ObamaCare. His econometric health-caremodelling is well-regarded. So his $297,600 plum from the Department ofHealth and Human Services in March for “technical assistance”estimating changes in insurance costs and coverage under ObamaCare,plus another $95,000 job, is at least defensible.
However, this financial relationship only came to wide notice when Mr.Gruber wrote a commentary for the New England Journal of Medicine,which has a more stringent disclosure policy than most media outlets.Last week the New York Times said it would have disclosed Mr. Gruber’sfinancial ties had it known when it published one of his op-eds lastyear. Mr. Gruber told Politico’s Ben Smith that “at no time have Ipublicly advocated a position that I did not firmly believe—indeed, Ihave been completely consistent with my academic track record.”