Health Care For America Now

Why is it that virtually every time the Lewin Group has come out with a study this year, the conclusion argues against health care reform?

The right has made an entire campaign out of using Lewin studies that distort the public health insurance option. By using assumptions that will get the results the group paying for the research wants - even if those assumptions have nothing to do with reality - Lewin delivers what it's being paid for. The big example this year was the Lewin report that claimed more than 100 million people would enroll in a public option, a result parrotted most recently by Republican senators during the Senate Finance Committee debate. Lewin got those result by modeling health care proposals that didn't have an insurance exchange and allowed all businesses to enroll in the public option, assumptions that were not reflected in any of the actual health care reform proposals.

Lewin's latest study claims that health care reform (specifically the Senate Finance Bill, but broadly applicable) would increase health care spending overall in this country. The conclusion of this study eerily echoes the conclusions of the fatally flawed insurance industry study which threatened to raise rates if health reform was passed. The industry has been on a campaign to blame health reform for driving premiums up, while at the same time driving premiums through the roof themselves.

Why do all of Lewin's studies seem to come to the same conclusion? Because the Lewin Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, and insurance company.

As the Washington Post points out, this salient fact isn't often noted in the media or by the conservatives who use Lewin's flawed numbers to fight against health care reform:

To Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied UnitedHealth and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "reasonable and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.

Lewin is not independent. As a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth and a corporate hit man-for-hire, the companies that commission Lewin studies have the option of burying reports that don't give them their desired outcome. This isn't speculation, either. John Sheils, Lewin's chief spokesman and Vice President, admitted this directly.

And Lewin is not non-partisan. UnitedHealth, it's parent company, has a history of giving to Republicans, including $1.5 million to help host 2008's Republican National Committee Convention in Minneapolis.

The Lewin Group always reaches the same conclusion - that health care reform is bad - because it's own by the same insurance companies spending millions to fight reform. No wonder their latest report looks like the insurance industry's - it is.