Halperin and Mike Allen are pushing the insurance industry’s paid-for research about how the world will end if we pass a health care reform bill. Jon Cohn debunks it here.
An industry thinks a bill is going to hurt the industry. So their lobby pays some accountants to write a study portraying the bill in the worst possible light.
And to Drudgico, Halperin, and Kaplan, that is big news.
What a world.
Update. Ezra:
The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-’90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that “the cumulative effect of PW’s methods … is to produce patently unreliable results.” It’s perhaps no surprise that the patently unreliable results were all in the tobacco industry’s favor. He who pays the piper names the tune, and all that.
All that makes it a bit hard to respond to this analysis. Seriously engaging with its methodology probably gives it more credit than it deserves, making this seem like an argument between two opposing sides as opposed to a predictable industry hit job. But totally ignoring its claims means some of them might live unchallenged. So rather than a full tour through the “analysis,” here are a couple of its more representative moments.
Notorious P.A.T.
Darn liberal media!
John Cole
I don’t care they are treating it as news.
I hate that they will be treating it as fact for the next 20 years.
Napoleon
This is a perfect example of why Obama lost me months ago. He has been getting rolled time and time again by industry in the pending bill and anyone with half a brain could see something like this coming. Now the bill is s—ty and it still has an uphill battle against the insurance industry.
Nice work MUP. Too bad we didn’t elect someone who knew how to lead.
On a similar subject the same rocket scientists in the White House apparently couldn’t see coming how they would be treated by the press even though anyone who didn’t sleep through the 90’s would have.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1929058,00.html
Ash Can
Kay was discussing this on a previous thread. Personally, I think payola’s involved, that part of the cost of producing the report is slipping a little something to “journalists” to persuade them to treat this like straight news.
maye
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/
Ezra weighs in.
DougJ
This is a perfect example of why Obama lost me months ago. He has been getting rolled time and time again by industry in the pending bill and anyone with half a brain could see something like this coming. Now the bill is s—-ty and it still has an uphill battle against the insurance industry.
I hope this is sarcasm. It’s a miracle to me that we’re this close to a health care bill
Ajay
Now only if liberal media takes them to task and pounce on it.
However I wouldnt be surprised if someone like Rich Sanchez pick it and show it for it is.
burnspbesq
From those wonderful folks who brought you sale-and-leaseback of your public sewer system, the Big Four.
Yeah, I believe that PwC didn’t fiddle with the data and make a series of self-amplifying questionable assumptions. I also believe that the Mets are going to win the World Series this year.
Morbo
In a related story, the National Association of Realtors say it’s a good time to buy a house. (Adding: fuck me… I don’t listen to commercial radio, but on a few hours worth of road trip this weekend there must have been at least an ad every hour from NAR).
4tehlulz
If they want to attack the bill that’s weakest on the public option and is least likely to survive reconciliation with the HELP bill (nevermind the House version), that’s fine by me.
That just means they’ll have less money to attack the final bill.
Valdivia
I think the attack shows just how worried they are by the CBO score of the Baucus bill. I am not a fan of the bill but obviously the numbers got the insurance boys worried. As long as they vote it tomorrow with no more delays because of this rent a research I am happy. Let’s keep reform moving.
4tehlulz
Oh wow. When you get called out by Arthur Andersen for fucking with data, you truly have no credibility.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
It is not – Obama continually negotiates against himself and gives away the farm then when push comes to shove with a vote the very people who he was trying to court stick a knife in his back. And why wouldn’t they? Its heads they win tails we loose and Obama is way too weak a negotiator to change that dynamic.
Brick Oven Bill
Logic is a good tool to analyze this health care bill and its implementation. The promise is to extend quality care to tens of millions of new members, and expand care to existing insured members by insuring existing conditions, among other things.
The argument goes on that the costs will not rise. This not a Logical argument.
Therefore, we can conclude that either:
1. There will have to be a massive tax increase, most likely the VAT; or
2. There will be massive rationing among existing insured Americans; or more likely
3. Both.
Then Hear the Rhetoric. First there are ’49 million’ uninsured Americans. Then there is a backlash against spending tax money on illegal aliens, so the Rhetoric changes to there are ‘more than 20 million’ uninsured Americans.
We can then conclude that the President changed his Rhetoric to ‘more than 20 million’, because he fully intends to provide coverage for illegal aliens, but to make the debate more easily defended Rhetorically. Thus we can make Character judgments about the man.
We can also conclude that this is not about the quality or affordability of health care, but is instead about control.
Napoleon
And by the way, if I was Obama this is exactly what I would do:
http://www.samefacts.com/2009/10/uncategorized/the-double-cross/
If you sprain my ankle, I’ll break your knee.
The Grand Panjandrum
This is an industry hit job disguised as “the other side of the argument” once again. It’s an old, but effective trick, unless exposed and immediately debunked.
Wag
Ask an accountant what 2+2 equals, and the answer is “What do you want it to be?”
bob h
They want us to think they are being dragged against their will into HCR that will deliver tens of millions of subsidized, new customers to them with no public option competition. This is just Kabuki theater.
John S.
BOB, you wouldn’t know a logical argument if one held you up at gunpoint. Especially since you think that Glenn Beck makes ‘logical arguments’ all the time.
kay
“Or take the assumption of “full cost-shifting of cuts to public programs.” What that means, essentially, is that health-care spending is considered a constant, and every dollar that a public program cuts from its payments to hospitals is a dollar the private health-care industry has to add to its reimbursements to hospitals. Have you ever heard of that before, in any industry? If Blockbuster decides to cut costs to consumers by negotiating lower payments to movie studios, does Netflix send out a sorrowful e-mail explaining that it will have to increase its membership fee because it now needs to make higher payments to movie studios?”
Great article.
Comrade Dread
Okay, I’m no longer against a public option. There is no reason why we can’t have universal health care. If that means we need to cut back on the preventative wars to pay for it, all the better.
I was having doubts that any bill that makes it through Congress is going to be anything but a major giveaway to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, but I suppose if they’re putting this much effort into tarring and feathering it, it can’t be all that bad.
Go Democrats.
Punchy
I’m also guessing that pr0n industry research shows that fisting videos have a positive influence on senior citizens’ sex lives. Also.
BDeevDad
Nate Silver says it’s all about the stock price.
Zifnab
I don’t even mind these reports on their face. If the industry has a financial gun pointed at its leg, I can’t blame them for squirming.
But the insurance industry isn’t the only industry in the US. Millions of small businesses (including my own) get gouged every year by these guys. And there’s little push back from the small business end that gets any recognition.
It’s the sheer, obnoxious one-sidedness. Yesterday, the AP’s $1.5 trillion estimate was touted as god’s honest truth. Then we got to hear about death panels. Today we’re hearing about the end of the health insurance industry (which is a Very Bad Thing(tm) while free-market ninjas insisted that letting the banks / auto industry fail would have been Capitalism! Hurray!) Tomorrow, maybe we’ll hear about how universal health care will result in mandatory abortions.
But hearing any serious discussion of CBO reports or the merit of Single Payer or the actual cost benefit analysis of doing something versus doing nothing versus doing the GOP’s idea gets such rare coverage.
We just jump from one freak out to the next. There’s no sober analysis. Only hysterics.
GregB
I remember when Bush the Dimmer nominated Harriet Meiers to the Supreme Court and some nitwit wingnut posted” “We’ll have to reserve judgement until Rush tells us what he thinks.”
Now the nutsackers are deferring their conclusions until Glenn The Silver Gopher Beck expounds.
Can you imagine what kind of mushed-up mind you’d have to have to allow a visibly mental shitheel like Beck affect your opinions?
And eff Politichole, Mike Allen and the rest of the them.
-G
JK
Mark Halperin and Mike Allen are the Tool Brothers.
Doug,
How the hell do you retain your sanity when you spend so many of your waking hours reading these clueless, useless fools of the MSM?
Scott Rock
@4tehlulz: This.
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq: Woohoo! Go Mets!
Brick Oven Bill
Someone recently asked what the Romans gave to us. The truth is that the Romans gave us very little. The Romans simply adopted what the Greeks had provided. The next great step was the Enlightenment and the Founding of America. Thus the 5000-year Leap.
The Greeks defined two types of Rhetoric. The first is good and useful. It is called ‘True Rhetoric’, and with its use, populations with the ability to freely exchange ideas, can arrive at a Logical conclusion.
The second type is ‘False Rhetoric’. ‘More than 20 million’ is False Rhetoric, and can be compared to bearing false witness. Nobody likes people who bear false witness. In Natural Law societies, these people are frequently banished and forced to eat grubs.
arguingwithsignposts
So for those of you reading BJ on iPhones or iPod Touches, are you using safari, or some type of reader app?
tc125231
@Zifnab:
Yeah. It is hard to see any good end to this. Once upon a time, the US was a “how to” country that solved problems. Now, supported by the MSM, the public is kept an a state of constant near hysteria.
Of course, as has been pointed out, this is because there are a lot of people at the top, aided and abetted by the MSM, who like things as they are and don’t WANT any problems solved. “Apres moi, le deluge.” The new Village motto.
Why does the MSM support this? To quote an old Mel Brooks routine: “…for the money.”
tc125231
@Brick Oven Bill: This is a complete misreading of history, and typical of your sloppy methodology. There is no doubt that the Greeks were the intellectual backbone of the empire –they had, however, no gift whatever for administration or law. They never could have run something that large that lasted that long.
schrodinger's cat
Second Law of Wingular Dynamics
The nonsense wingnuts spout tends to increase over time
As we approach absolute wingularity, the sense wingnuts make approaches an absolute minimum.
**Reposted with minor changes from two threads ago**, awaiting comments, suggestions, still working on the zeroth and the first law.
Zifnab
@tc125231:
I mean, at a certain point, people will just tune it out. You can’t scare all the people all the time, and when burn out sets in you lose your audience. That’s why the astroturf groups have to change their names every six months, while the ACLU has been the ACLU forever.
Eventually, these guys burn through their credibility. But in the mean time, they clog the airwaves with their shrillness and never let a word in edgewise. It’s just so damn obnoxious.
schrodinger's cat
@schrodinger’s cat:
I can has edit function? the formatting on my last post is completely screwed up, sorry!
Zifnab
@schrodinger’s cat:
This raises some interesting questions regarding Peak Wingnut.
Ash
@Zifnab: Wait, oh god. The universe is expanding as well and we’ll never ever see where it ends. This does not bode well for Peak Wingnut™.
Martin
Zeroth law:
The media is said to be in wingnut equilibrium when the nonsense spouted does not change from media organization to media organization, such as at the peak of the Rev. Wright scandal.
Brachiator
@Brick Oven Bill:
Too bad, then, that you know nothing about either logic or analysis.
But thanks for playing.
Martin
First law:
The increase in the wingnuttiness of a system is equal to the amount of hysteria and racism added to the system, minus the amount of logic lost as a result of rational actors leaving the system to its surroundings.
Sly
The argument is counter-intuitive if you fail to take into account how non-insured, fungible costs are treated in an insurance market, or, more plainly, how higher costs incurred by the insured will be contained through more preventative medicine and larger risk pools.
This does not make the argument illogical.
This proves nothing aside from the fact that one of the governing principles of conservative social policy is unadulterated spite. Some people would rather have immigrants suffer than gain an economic benefit for themselves. Color me shocked.
IndieTarheel
@schrodinger’s cat:
First law: Theirs goes to 11.
Midnight Marauder
@arguingwithsignposts:
I typically just use Safari on my iphone, but I also use it on my laptop (PC) because it gives me comments buttons (!) and the highly-elusive, Pegasus-esque “Edit” feature (!!).
Brick Oven Bill
More Logic:
1. There are tens of millions of Mexicans and Central Americans who earn a few dollars a day, when they are working.
2. Food stamp benefits in America are around $10/person/day, when they are breathing, and sometimes otherwise.
3. There is negligible health care for indigenous populations throughout most of Central and South America.
4. The promised health care benefits would be thousands of dollars per person per year, or probably in excess of another $10/day/person, when they are breathing, and sometimes otherwise.
Therefore; the passage of this bill would create a great migration of Mesoamericans into the US, destroying the Middle Class, tanking the cost of labor, and increasing the profit margin for Goldman Sachs.
The corporate motto for Goldman Sachs is ‘Long-Term Greed’. Obama spoke out against ‘Short-Term Greed’.
Get it?
DougJ
How the hell do you retain your sanity when you spend so many of your waking hours reading these clueless, useless fools of the MSM?
I enjoy it. I would spend all day doing it if I had the time.
It’s like watching Michael from the office or one of those old Bill Murray characters from SNL (Todd or the lounge singer) — they’re so awful that it makes me laugh.
jl
Early this morning, I heard CBS and ABC radio news report the PWC report straight up as an industry paid report, with pretty good balance, and response from health care reporters. One of the reporters was Joh Cohn, who said the report looked OK on the issues it covered, but the problem was with what it left out -basically said it was an incomplete analysis. He compared it to a cook evaluating a cake recipe who left out the sugar and complained that the cake was not sweet enough.
So, what I heard was good coverage that put the report in perspective.
Compare that to the WaPo coverage, which cleverly blended statements that are accepted facts with controversial conclusions that appear only in the PWC report to produce a great example of truthiness. And, as a commenter pointed out in the previous post on this topic, the WaPo didn’t seem to have the resources to include facts from their own reporting over the last few weeks. WaPo is bought and paid for.
B.O.B. had opportunity to defend what he said and wasted it on a follow-up that was an obvious fantasy. Too bad.
jl
Off topic for the commies here at Balloon-Juice: The dreaded furren Nobel Committee strikes another blow against free enterprise. Two economists who are very prominent in the New Institutional Economics school, Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Williamson can be considered one of the founders of New Institutionalism.
I like this decision. The free market fanatics of the New Chicago School are sure that institutions don’t matter at all, or whenever they do, they are bad unless they get out of the way of unregulated free markets. Williamson, Ostrom and others in New Institutionalism say that they do matter, and can work for good or ill.
See Krugman’s blog in NY Times today for his comments.
Twenty years ago, the ‘real men’ in economics said New Instituional stuff would go nowhere. Another wrong prediction.
PS: Hurwicz already received a prize and he thinks institutions matter, but his work is so mathy, I don’t think enough people noticed to bring it to popular attention. Hurwicz is kind of mathematical economics version of New Institutionalism. That commie Noble Economics (Memorial) Prize slipped by the ideological economics police radar. Wonder if this one will.
RSA
I use Safari to read BJ on my iPhone, too. It’s reasonable, modulo the built-in app limitations (e.g., there’s no scroll-to-bottom-of-page and I have real trouble scrolling without accidentally hitting a link and going to a different page.)
BigSwami
It will, in this case. But that’s sort of the point.
elftx
why do I get the feeling that Baucus was complicit in this report and of course calls it bupkus implying that his bill is soooo much better
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brick Oven Bill:
There, I fixed that link for you BOB.
Wag
JM
Today ends in ‘y,’ doesn’t it?
HyperIon
@Zifnab:
How you been following the Daily Howler on how no one wants to talk about how everybody else manages to pay less?
Steeplejack
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
LOL.
Chris Johnson
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Just what I was thinking :D
“Brought peace?”
“Oh, peace! SHADDUP!”
Shinobi
My logic:
Necessary health care reform that does not include a public option is going to cause the overall costs of private insurance plans to rise.
Therefore, to ensure that health care remains affordable to Americans the only acceptable bill is one that contains a low cost public option for individuals who are priced out of private health care.
yippie
a public option comes out of the pockets of everyone who pays taxes, whether they personally support such an option or not. this fact alone makes a(n additional, since we already have several such options) public option questionable at best and completely unlikely to reduce costs.
if ‘cutting waste’ in medicaid and medicare is so likely to provide the funding for the public option, then why are we not seeing any attempts to cut that waste right now? you could cut that waste and send out a check to all the americans you think need government-paid-for doctor visits.
i don’t really get much of the fixation on doctor visits. the overwhelming majority of americans have health problems related entirely to diet (eliminating soy and corn and wheat subsidies would do more for lower-income americans’ health than any number of healthcare vouchers/government-paid insurance checks) and environmental factors (hello noise pollution– the poor man’s recipe for both mental and physical health destruction) that are not easily fixed by extra pills or doctor visits.
those much-approved systems in other countries rely on a tax burden that is unsustainable when nobody’s having children (despite the oh-so-supposedly-better-healthcare access).
in ontario, healthcare is ~45% of the budget. you think that is a good goal for the USA to aim for? you think ontario will suddenly find enough taxpayers to sustain that? the canadian federal government has sliced its funding of all provinces’ healthcare provision. our neighbor next door only has 30 million citizens to worry about and yet it is having enough difficulty funding single-payer that the federal government leaves it to the provinces to work out (despite provinces requesting otherwise).
we can bring soldiers home, but much of the defense budget is pensions and…uh, government-funded health insurance. so cutting the defense budget means screwing veterans out of health insurance to, uh, give government-funded health insurance to civilians. i’d love to see that justification.
the truth is that diet is the problem with most sick americans, and it’s influenced by horrifying agriculture subsidies and policies, not by whether you went to the doctor or not. in fact, many maladies can be solved through diet changes that don’t involve a doctor or medicines/drugs/pills. but again, eating better (i.e., abandoning corn/soy/wheat en masse) is way cheaper than subsidized doctor visits from a shrinking pool of taxpayers and totally sustainable, so we can’t possibly look into that.