PricewaterhouseCoopers Backs Away From Insurance Study
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care
They helped conduct it, but the backlash at the incoherence of the findings has forced them to place the blame back on the folks who commissioned it, AHIP.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the authors of AHIP’s report, put out a statement last night that basically said, “Hey, we weren’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it.” The statement only seems to reinforce critics’ view that the report is skewed precisely because it doesn’t take into account the totality of reform. PWC’s report estimates that insurance premiums will rise faster under the proposed reforms than under the current system.The last, and key, line from the statement: “If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
Allow me to translate, “AHIP asked us to conduct an intellectually dishonest study and we did it because they paid handsomely. But we didn’t realize they were going to act as if this was iron clad evidence that premiums would skyrocket. That’s why we’re stepping in and calling BS on them so they don’t destroy our credibility.”
I said it yesterday, as if we were really going to believe this study anyway?
More as it develop…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 13th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
… which would kind of be like Arthur Andersen saying, “Ken Lay and Andy Fastow asked us to massage Enron’s numbers a bit, which we were happy to do, because they paid handsomely. But we didn’t realize they were actually going to screw innocent shareholders out of their life savings! That’s why we’re stepping in and calling BS on them so they don’t destroy our credibility.”
Little late with that barn door, now the that horse is clear on the other side of the next town, already.
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
October 13th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mr. Meta. Mr. Meta said: DONKLEPHANT: PricewaterhouseCoopers Backs Away From Insurance Study http://ow.ly/15UGWB [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I’m sure the republicants will jump all over it though.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
You nailed that Agnostick.
This is just further proof that the Republican idea of reform is worth about the same as a bucket with a hole in it.
Anyone else recall how the Republicans crowed about how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (and I am quoting President George Bush here was
“the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Remember how it was supposed to restore credibility to accounting practices and oversight of corporations?
The difference between PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Divine Brown; at least Divine Brown was honest about being a prostitute.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:37 am
What about using the ballot initiative process as a method of healthcare reform, let the people vote directly.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
This is eerily similar to the CBO’s evaluation of the Baucus bill. The CBO said this bill will reduce the national dept over 10 years IF a multiple things line up perfectly in a way they never have in the past. Then the Dems and the fringe media run with it like it’s gospel and they’ve finally got a bill that’s gonna make health insurance affordable. All a bunch of BS. You can’t trust any of these slugs. At least we still get to be thrown in jail if our insurance plan doesn’t measure up to what these tyrant looters say it has too. Nice to know the “right to life” part of the Declaration wasn’t included in the whole hopey changey thing.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:27 am
All budget projections are based on “things lining up.”
In this case the non-partisan wonks at the CBO think that if the bill passes things will probably line up such that we shave $81 Billion off the deficit. They’re almost certainly wrong, and IMO probably underestimate the savings, but they do know this budget stuff pretty well and they don’t do partisan spin.
The problem with this particular study is that it does do partisan spin. It makes some pretty dumb assumptions, apparently solely to make the Baucus bill look bad.
Nonetheless they make at least one good point. Baucus penalties for not buying insurance are pathetic. They will not convince people to join the individual market, they will just convince people to bitch about one more tax. Which means the new Exchange will be full of sick people, and insurance from it will cost more than it should.
Those need to be upped. Period.
October 18th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
[...] And PWC is now backing away from the report, saying that — AT THE REQUEST OF AHIP — PWC only analyzed a small slice of the bill’s measures to come up with its conclusions. Politico has a good brief on PWC’s backtracking, but the ever humorous Donkelphant says it better than LiteralMayhem even could: Allow me to translate, “AHIP asked us [PWC] to conduct an intellectually dishonest study and we di… [...]