Not so independent
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- September
- 15
We published a letter today from a Pearl River resident who was pretty down on health-care reform. The letter-writer renews the discussion about “death panels,” writing, “Of course, there’s nothing in HR 3200 that’s called a death panel. But the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research was enacted in the stimulus bill.”
The writer continued, “This bureaucracy is, as we speak, evaluating and developing treatment options for you and my family.”
It sounds like they are coming to get us, doesn’t it?
The ominous theme continued: “The Lewin Group did an independent study and estimated that within five to 10 years, 105 million Americans would lose their private health care with the enactment of HR 3200.”
105 million people? Wow. Talk about Halloween come early . . .
As it turns out, though, maybe we shouldn’t be so scared. An alert reader sent us an email this afternoon advising that the Lewin Group probably isn’t the best source for an “independent study” on health care. The reader wrote that the Lewin Group is “the lobbying arm” of UnitedHealth Group, the big insurance outfit. That would make it a very interested party.
New Yorkers might remember the name UnitedHealth; some time ago, it agreed to a $50 million settlement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and a $350 million settlement with the American Medical Association, for wrongful conduct going back as far as 1994. The Washington Post wrote about the Lewin Group’s connection with UnitedHealth. Here is a link supplied by our reader. And here is a link to Cuomo’s Web site, which posts a copy of the settlement with UnitedHealth.
The Post writer notes that insurance companies oppose the public option, “saying it would undercut their prices and put them out of business by slashing payments to doctors and hospitals.”
The L.A. Times writes that the California attorney general has been asked to investigate charges that UnitedHealth and another big insurer pushed “workers to write their elected officials, attend town hall meetings and enlist family and friends to ensure an overhaul that matches their interests.” This is what the L.A. Times wrote.
We’d wouldn’t publish many letters if we had to vet every potential conflict, source of information or purported fact, so we appreciate it when readers lend a hand.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 5:44 pm by Herb Pinder.
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Amazing! Pinder goes to great lengths here to undermine a fact with which he disagrees by attacking its source, not its substance. A truly objective editor would have looked at the source and, receiving notice of a potentially biased source, questioned the fact internally, and then tried to verify the fact. But no, as he does with any other position with which he disagrees, Pinder and his lefty minions are content to assume the facts are in doubt and then use ad hominems and invective to tear down those who offer inconvenient truths. Being an advocate with a printing press is so much easier than being a responsible journalist.