A New Deceptive Report from Big Insurance

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After months of appearing to be cooperative while quietly working behind the scenes to influence health care reform, the health insurance industry has finally launched a wholesale attack against the Senate Finance Committee's health insurance reform legislation on the day before Committee members are set to vote on the plan. Following in the tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry commissioned a report that projects economic doom for those seeking to reform it. The report was commissioned from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a consultancy that coincidentally was also used by the tobacco industry to predict economic devastation from tobacco taxes. PWC's report mistakenly assumes there will be no behavioral changes at all in response to the new policies being proposed, and bases conclusions on this assumption. This is akin to analyzing the economic effect a cigarette tax increase would have, without taking into account any drop in sales the new tax would create.