The Vermont Attorney General's Office agreed to settle a false claims case for $90,000 against Jonathan Gruber, PhD, an economist contracted by Vermont to model a single-payer healthcare system, according to a report from the Burlington Free Press.
Two years after launching an investigation into the billing practices of Dr. Gruber, who is a professor at Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology and known as a chief architect of the ACA, the Vermont Attorney General's Office concluded Dr. Gruber violated the civil False Claims Act by allegedly submitting false invoices to the state, according to the report. Dr. Gruber allegedly submitted invoices claiming he worked 100 hours and his assistant worked 500 hours each month for two months in 2014, but investigators found the invoices to be inaccurate, suggesting his assistant had worked between 12 to 16.7 hours per day, according to the report.
Under the original contract with Vermont, when the modeling was complete the state would pay $40,000 more, according to the report. However, after Dr. Gruber made controversial comments about voters in 2014, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, D, updated the contract so only the research assistants would be paid out, according the report. Dr. Gruber billed this work as $50,000.
Dr. Gruber denied the claim he violated the False Claims Act, according to the report. However, in the settlement he agreed to release his claim to both the $40,000 outstanding payment and the $50,000 for his research assistants, according to the report.
Read the full story here.
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