House panel calls Obamacare 'architect' Gruber to testify

WASHINGTON -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has asked Jonathan Gruber, the economist and Obama administration adviser who admitted that "lack of transparency" helped pass the health law known as Obamacare, to testify about those statements.

Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., announced a Dec. 9 hearing on the Affordable Care Act, with Gruber and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner as star witnesses.

They won't get friendly questioning.

"From the outset, the health law has been the poster child for this Administration's broken transparency promises," Issa said in a statement. "I expect Mr. Gruber and Administrator Tavenner to testify publicly next month about the arrogance and deceptions surrounding the passage and implementation of Obamacare."

Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped develop the economic models behind the Affordable Care Act, spoke in an online video last year about how the "stupidity of the American voter" was instrumental in getting the bill passed.

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Tavenner is being called to discuss the revelation this week that the Obama administration artificially inflated the enrollment numbers on health exchanges by including 380,000 dental plans. She testified to the committee in September that there were 7.3 million paid subscribers to those plans, without disclosing that the numbers included dental plans -- a departure from past reports. The Department of Health and Human Services called the discrepancy a "mistake."

Without dental plans, the number of paid subscribers declined to 6.7 million last month -- below the administration's initial goal of 7 million.

Reached Friday, Gruber declined to comment on the committee's invitation. HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tavenner's appearance.

Neither has been subpoenaed.

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