When America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) issued a report stating saying the insurance industry would absolutely have to raise premiums if healthcare reforms go through, the result was probably less pro-industry than they had hoped it would be. So transparently self-serving and flawed as to be almost comic, the AHIP study's impact on the process was zero. In fact, the Senate Finance Committee passed their bill -- the very next day -- with one Republican vote. Finally, even the firm who wrote the study, PricewaterhouseCoopers, admitted that the study was flawed -- they were instructed to ignore certain provisions, which rendered PricewaterhouseCoopers's report less than predictive."America's Health Insurance Plans engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to prepare a report that focused on four components of the Senate Finance Committee proposal: -- Insurance market reforms and consumer protections that would raise health insurance premiums for individuals and families if the reforms are not coupled with an effective coverage requirement," the firm wrote in a statement.
"The reform packages under consideration have other provisions that we have not included in this analysis. We have not estimated the impact of the new subsidies on the net insurance cost to households. Also, 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, AHIP made sure the firm they hired would predict the gloom and doom scenario they wanted... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
