The White House is tempering its reaction to the new health insurance industry report we’ve been writing about today since the administration questions its legitimacy.
A senior administration official said they weren’t yet sure if America’s Health Insurance Plans was launching an offensive to try and defeat health care before tomorrow’s Senate Finance Committee vote, but was skeptical of AHIP’s motivations.
“Given how they behaved in the past, it’s very likely they could be up to their old tricks,” the official told TPMDC.
The official said the report left out large chunks of information about the bill and from the new Congressional Budget Office estimate that shows the bill would decrease the deficit.
The official said the report ignores provisions that make health care more affordable – tax credits, an exchange for small businesses and plans for the young and healthy – and doesn’t take into account that the bill does not require those with employer-sponsored health insurance to change.
AHIP’s Karen Ignagni said on a conference call that’s going on right now they started to be concerned over the last several weeks, but the administration official said the White House was “misled” by AHIP, which gave no heads up before dropping the report late Sunday.
The official said Ignagni, president and CEO of AHIP, met last Wednesday night with NancyAnn DeParle (director of the White House health office, aka a “czar”) and Larry Summers (director of the White House National Economic Council) and did not complain about the issues raised in the report a few days later.
“There was this good conversation going on and she told us she’s gotten some experts to take a look at the bill but was a ways away from having anything they were going to put out,” the official complained. “Clearly it was in the works.”
I spoke to a PricewaterhouseCoopers staffer who said the accounting giant isn’t able to comment about the report despite being flooded with requests. Asked specific questions, he told me it was “doubtful” PWC would share the numbers about how much AHIP paid to commission the report. But AHIP told reporters on a conference call just now that questions about the methodology would have to go to PWC.
