Insurance Industry Report: So Twisted Even Its Author Disowns It

by Mike Hall, Oct 14, 2009

Turns out the “report” on health care reform, released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is being denounced by the very company that prepared it.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) admits that at the request of AHIP, it cooked up the scariest scenario possible about the cost of health care reform and ignored factors that show health care reform could actually save money.

According to the Politico’s Live Pulse column, PwC released a statement

basically saying, “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.

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.”

In other words, PwC is saying if reform’s cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.

Speaking of insurance companies’ casual relationship with the truth and their scare tactics campaign, members of the Alliance for Retired Americans are protesting today in front of the Albuquerque Humana headquarters (an AHIP member), denouncing its recent mailings targeting seniors and demanding they halt participation in the AHIP ad campaign.

Humana and other insurance companies recently sent letters to seniors with Medicare Advantage policies, claiming health care reform legislation would cause “millions of seniors and disabled individuals” to lose their benefits. The privately-run Medicare advantage plans cost an average of 14 percent more than traditional Medicare.

Humana is the second-largest provider of Medicare Advantage policies in the nation. Says John “J.D.” Doran, acting president of the New Mexico Alliance for Retired Americans:

Humana and AHIP’s behavior is unacceptable. Seniors like myself know the truth about health insurance reform and are working harder than ever to cut wasteful government subsidies to insurance companies and to push for a public option.

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