Racist Insurance Study Undermines Goal of Nationalized ObamaCare

Fox News story with comments in red added by me.

The White House fired back Monday at the health insurance industry for issuing a study that claims the health care reform bill working its way toward a key vote Tuesday will raise the cost of individual coverage by hundreds of dollars a year.

Linda Douglass, spokeswoman with the Office of Health Reform, said in a statement that the timing of the study, released just hours before the Senate Finance Committee is set to vote on its bill, raises questions about its legitimacy. She joined other Democratic officials in trying to keep the analysis from gaining traction.

"This is a self-serving analysis from the insurance industry, one of the major opponents of health insurance reform," she said. "It comes on the eve of a vote that will reduce the industry's profits. It is hard to take it seriously." (As if many of the claims made by the administration about the cost of health care reform can be taken seriously.)

But America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry group that sent its member companies the new study late Sunday, stood by the findings.

Spokesman Robert Zirkelbach rejected the suggestion that the study was timed for maximum impact, saying it responded to changes made to the bill over the last few weeks and was only finalized over the weekend. He said AHIP still supports health care reform, but wants to see additional changes made, either in the Finance Committee or later in the process.

"This data is an important part of the health care reform discussion. American people want to know how these provisions are going to impact the cost of health care coverage," he said.

The accounting firm study projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.

Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study commissioned by the insurance group.

Of course, the White House can't allow facts and studies to distract it from the mission of nationalizing our entire health care system. While the administration hasn't directly attacked CBO numbers in the same manner as it is attacking this study, they have also "cast doubts" on any numbers coming from the Congressional Budget Office and other independent sources that suggest that ObamaCare might cost a single penny. Besides, I'm sure this study was racist. Just ask Jimmy.