"Obama officials, who have been wooing the insurers..."

[brentspeak]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-health-obama-insurer-report,0,3856735.story

After months of collaboration on President Obama's attempt to overhaul the nation's healthcare system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort today with a report warning that the typical family premium could rise over the next decade by $4,000 more than projected under current law.

(snip)

Administration officials, who spent much of the spring and summer wooing the insurers, questioned the timing and authorship of the report, which was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and paid for by America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group.

(snip)

Obama had courted industry leaders in the hopes of neutralizing many of the players who helped defeat a similar effort by President Clinton. Yet as the process has moved from abstract concepts to legislative details, the tension has mounted. Hospitals and doctors have increasingly complained that the administration is not keeping bargains it struck over how many Americans would be covered by an overhaul and what payment changes would be made.

But no industry has reacted with the same intensity as the insurance lobby.

If a) this is at all similar to how Obama was publicly "outraged" at Wall St. and used a few tough words in front of a carefully-prepared photo op -- while simultaneously working to fork over what little remained in the the national treasury over to the banks, it wouldn't matter what the insurance lobby and the Obama administration say about each other in public: the "tension" between the two would be as real as professional wrestling. If b) it is "real", then, well, the word "duh" should be worn as a t-shirt by Obama and everyone in the White House.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Then there was the secret deal with PhRMA. nt

[IndianaGreen]

2. The secret deal with PhRMA that wasn't a deal, until it turned out to be true

[joeycola]

3. and with the Hospital Associations

[Democrats_win]

4. When he catches them, it's Gitmo baby! Send the crooks to Gitmo!

[ProSense]

5. You do realize that this is a hit piece in support of the insurance industry

Administration officials, who spent much of the spring and summer wooing the insurers, questioned the timing and authorship of the report...

The MSM loves you.

[IndianaGreen]

6. The only hit here is the one on the American people by those that put Single Payer off the table

[ProSense]

7. The majority of Americans people support a public option. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

9. A real public option is to let people go under Medicare before they are 65

The American people only support what they know, and what they know is often the bullshit they are told by MSM.

Had Obama been a real leader, he would have pushed for Single Payer, which would have given us universal health care.

Obama's most generous plan will not cover everyone.

[ProSense]

12. No, the American people support a government run plan. You can't simply add your

qualifier and call it fact.

[IndianaGreen]

13. Britain's NHS is government run. Medicare is not government run.

The government doesn't own or run the hospitals and the doctors, as NHS does.

[joeycola]

16. The WH should have ethically allowed for ALL groups to be heard. Instead

they kicked advocates under the table. Shame on them.

[vaberella]

10. I personally love it when progressives on DU push a right-wing supported article.

It's brilliant...and reeks of desperation.

[andym]

8. I think I understand the insurer's opposition

Although they may have helped "write" the Baucus bill, they believe the risks of getting a real competitor (strong public option open to all) is too great. Therefore they want the Baucus bill killed before it changes as the process forward.

[babylonsister]

11. WaPo/LATimes hypes insurance industry claims; doesn't bother to assess credibility

Same article. Guess LA Times couldn't be bothered either.


http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910120003

WaPo hypes insurance industry claims; doesn't bother to assess crediblity

October 12, 2009 11:41 am ET by Jamison Foser


The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly "reports" on the insurance industry's assault on health care reform:

After months of collaboration on President Obama's attempt to overhaul the nation's health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected.

...

Industry officials said they intend to circulate the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Capitol Hill and promote it in new advertisements. That could complicate Democratic hopes for action on the legislation this week.

...

Though open to dispute, the analysis is certain to raise questions about whether Obama can deliver on his twin promises of extending coverage to millions of uninsured Americans while also curbing skyrocketing health-care costs.

Connolly then quoted from the report, and quoted an insurance industry spokeswoman. Eventually, near the end of the article, Connolly finally got around to including some disagreements with the study's conclusions. But she didn't make any attempt to answer for readers a rather basic question: Is the insurance industry study correct?

Nor did she spend any time at all putting PricewaterhouseCoopers' involvement in context. It seems like they're a neutral, credible source, right? But as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains elsewhere, the firm's track record isn't particularly good:

The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-'90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that "the cumulative effect of PW's methods ... is to produce patently unreliable results." It's perhaps no surprise that the patently unreliable results were all in the tobacco industry's favor.

That seems like some useful context that could have helped Connolly's readers, doesn't it? Klein goes on to point out glaring flaws in the insurance industry study -- flaws that are nowhere to be found in Connolly's article. Instead, Connolly leads with the alarming conclusion that the "typical family" could pay $4,000 more for health care -- and makes no attempt to assess the validity of that claim. She doesn't even explain what "typical family" means.

Could someone explain to me why Connolly's write-up is on the front page of the Washington Post, and Klein's is on a blog on the Post's web page?

UPDATE: TNR's Jonathan Cohn posted at 10:56 last night an assessment of the study that noted it makes a series of "strange assumptions" that calls its conclusions into question. Like this one, which Cohn quotes directly: "We have estimated the potential impact of the tax on premiums. Although we expect employers to respond to the tax by restructuring their benefits to avoid it, we demonstrate the impact assuming it is applied."

So the insurance industry study is based on assumptions it believes are false. That's a pretty damning piece of information, isn't it? Jonathan Cohn posted it online last night -- but Ceci Connolly couldn't be bothered to include it in her write-up of the insurance industry's attack for today's Washington Post.

[Honeycombe8]

14. I hope the W.H. admin. is waking up, now. All their efforts at being reasonable have been thrown

back in their faces. And they lost valuable time because of it.

It's time for them to take a strong stand, use all the political muscle they have, and get passed what they want, without trying to strike so-called deals with the obvious enemy.

[dionysus]

15. roffle.