An architect of the Affordable Care Act apparently failed to disclose his financial ties to the federal government on at least two submissions to the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the nation’s most respected medical publications.
At the same time MIT professor Jonathan Gruber was under multiple contracts for consultation services to the federal government for healthcare reform, he submitted two articles, “Universal Health Insurance Coverage or Economic Relief — A False Choice” and “A Win-Win Approach to Financing Health Care Reform,” to the NEJM without disclosing the apparent conflict of interest.
The articles, the first published in January 2009 and the second published in June 2009, include a disclaimer at the end: “No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.”
The NEJM website also includes an Oct. 8, 2009, video that features Gruber and others discussing the cost and economics of healthcare reform. No potential conflict of interest warning is included on the video page.
Gruber has received more than $2 million in contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the Washington Post. Separately, Gruber has been awarded top dollar contracts from individual states for his consultation services, including $481,050 from Michigan, $329,000 from Minnesota, $400,000 from Vermont and $400,000 from Wisconsin, according to the same report.
Federal contracts awarded to Gruber date back to at least 2007, the year that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., assembled a campaign team for his 2008 presidential effort.
On Dec. 2, 2009, however, Gruber’s submitted material to the NEJM began to appear with a notice of a potential conflict of interest. Gruber’s work appears at least six more times on the NEJM website, each submission including the same warning.
At around the same time that Gruber was contracted by the federal government for his services on a project titled, “Choice and Consequences in the Medicare Part D Plan,” the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a “white paper” on the topic of potential conflicts of interest.
“Since the first conflict-of-interest disclosures appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in the early 1980s, the rationale for including this information in published scientific articles has not changed,” the paper read.
“Scientific discourse depends on objectivity. The conduct of science can be influenced by biases introduced by conflicts of interest, whether they are financial, professional, intellectual, or fueled by academic competition. The potential for bias is real, whether or not researchers believe those conflicts of interest influence their conduct,” the paper added.
Gruber has gained notoriety recently as a result of publication of six videos from recent years in which he is seen making controversial statements about the “lack of transparency” required for the passage of Obamacare and the “stupidity” of American voters.
The Washington Examiner contacted the NEJM and asked a representative whether the journal was aware of Gruber’s potential conflicts of interest when he submitted material in early 2009.
“Beginning in October 2009, we, along with all member journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, asked all authors to complete a uniform disclosure form listing all relevant financial associations,” NEJM media relations specialist Jennifer Zeis told the Washington Examiner in an email.
“Prior to that point, authors were asked to disclose only commercial relationships, not government contracts. Thus, Dr. Gruber disclosed his government consultancy in the disclosure form that accompanied his December 2009 article,” the email added.
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This article has been updated to include comment from the New England Journal of Medicine.
