October 12, 2009: Firm Backs Away from Own Insurance Impact Study

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the services and accounting firm that recently released a controversial study funded by the health care insurance lobbying firm America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP—see October 11, 2009 and October 11-12, 2009), backs away from claims that the report is comprehensive. Politico’s Chris Frates writes that the statement “basically sa[ys], ‘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 statement concludes, “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.” Frates explains, “In other words, PWC is saying if reform’s cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.” [Politico, 10/13/2009]