Second state fires O-Care adviser Gruber

The former administration adviser who credited the healthcare law’s passage to the “stupidity of the American voter” is losing his second state consulting gig.

Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was fired by North Carolina’s state auditors office on Thursday as fallout from his controversial comments spread.

{mosads}“Gruber’s comment that it was all right to mislead people to get to a desired outcome that he favored led our auditors to determine he had at least the appearance of an independence impairment,” Bill Holmes, a spokesman for the auditor’s office, told WRAL.

Gruber had been hired to study the use of a managed care program in North Carolina, spending about five months analyzing data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Gruber was also fired earlier this week by Vermont. Officials there said they would not pay him the full $450,000 contract, though they expected him to finish the work. Gruber has also received nearly $480,000 as an adviser in Michigan, where legislators pledged to investigate his work there.

In North Carolina, Gruber will walk away with about $100,000 for the work already completed.