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Price Waterhouse and Big Tobacco

10/12/09, 4:14 am EST

There’s a big scary new study out today from the health insurance lobby and PricewaterhouseCoopers purporting to show that the Senate Finance Committee’s reform bill — funded by new excise taxes on “Cadillac” health plans — would cause future health insurance premiums to spiral out of control.

Before this genie gets too far out of the bottle, just consider the track record of such industry-funded excise tax “research” by Price Waterhouse.

In the early 1990s, Price Waterhouse did similar handiwork on behalf of Big Tobacco, serving up allegedly hard data to bolster arguments that a new excise tax on tobacco (a proposed mechanism to fund Clintoncare) would destroy hundreds of thousands of good American jobs.

Dire predictions. But a subsequent review of Price Waterhouse’s methods by an independent team at Arthur Andersen, revealed that Price Waterhouse’s “grossly exaggerated” and “one-sided analyses” were so “flawed” as to produce “patently unreliable results.”

To wit:

“The PW Report relied on methods and assumptions that create false and misleading results.”

AND:

“There are serious methodological problems and errors of omission (one-sided analyses likely to lead to misinterpretation) in … the PW Report”

MY FAVORITE PART:

“The PW Report… attributes 161,601 mining and construction jobs to the tobacco industry. This is approximately equal to the entire employment of the coal mining industry.”

IN SUM:

“These and other serious flaws in the Price Waterhouse Report and the Tobacco Institute Estimates build upon one-another in a cumulative fashion to present grossly exaggerated and misleading estimates.”

“The cumulative effect of PW’s methods… is to produce patently unreliable results.”


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Comments

BurnDaddy | 10/12/2009, 11:56 am EST

And the band played on…

Greg_D | 10/12/2009, 12:39 pm EST

Polls and research organizations are not to be trusted. The first thing they ask is “What do you want the results to be?”

Bob_R | 10/12/2009, 1:36 pm EST

It’s a pretty flimsy way to discount the report–compare it to a study that was done 16 years ago for a totally different effort. Just because that study was seriously flawed doesn’t mean this one is.

Should you eye it critically–yes. Should you discount it out-of-hand without even examining it? Only if you don’t care about the potential costs to Americans.

joe | 10/12/2009, 3:27 pm EST

They’re traitors, let’s face it. No other word for it. Traitors to their country.

They should all be rounded up, thrown in jail, their 3rd homes forfeit, and their kids kicked out of their ivy league schools.

Anonymous | 10/12/2009, 5:16 pm EST

Jed Clampett

PW was supposed to do a an impartial, fair and accurate as.sessment, not a PR job, K street does that kind of thing. What they did was abuse the public trust and for that PW and their employers should loose their business license and the leadership of the companies that approved the con should pay retribution… ie. loose the as.sets they gained through those lies and go to prison for acting against the rights of the public.

PW was also the company that was rating mortgage backed securities as AAA when the they weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, precipitating the economic collapse due to false information… their ‘opinion’ as the CEO’s of the company told congress. Their opinion robbed millions of their right to pursue happiness.

‘Subvert the rule of law’ is the final step in the fascist shift exposed in Naomi Wolf’s book ‘The End of America’. The intent is to make the population loose respect for the government and therefore loose confidence in their country. A year later, those that stole from the people with derivatives have not faced any form of justice and in fact, many are within the government making economic policy. You think they might set up the next economic collapse that transfers wealth from the people’s treasury to thieves? I’d be willing to bet on it.

Why are Americans so apathetic? Does the idiot box and the movies make them into total idiots that won’t do anything to safeguard their precious ‘freedom’?

Anonymous | 10/12/2009, 5:27 pm EST

While they argue about health care and distract us, the guy with moving the three shells around takes the accountability chip and tosses is under the table where no one can find it. No justice, no peace.

Izzy Weird | 10/12/2009, 8:46 pm EST

Given the track record of PricewaterhouseCooper, a respected firm, and the US Congress a body that all too often grossly underestimates cost, I side with the private firm.

Anonymous | 10/12/2009, 11:52 pm EST

respected firm???

Now that’s rich!!

Steve W from Ford | 10/13/2009, 12:32 pm EST

So Arthur Anderson is now cited as a reliable authority? Excuse me but weren’t they the only major accounting firm to be destroyed due to internal fraud and faulty reporting and audits?

I’d say the proof is in the pudding and how is that tobacco industry employment doing 20 years after PWC said it would be decimated? Well it’s been decimated!

I wonder how the current PWC prediction that people who are fined $750 a year if they do not purchase a $5000+ per year insurance policy, when they can always buy insurance at no penalty AFTER they get sick, and so will decide to pay the fine and take their chances, is going to work out?
I’m betting on PWC, how about you?

Heck if Obama and the dims manage to get this “reform” through in anywhere near it’s current form, I’ll gladly cancel my current insurance, pay the fine, and bank the difference. It’s the ONLY rational thing to do.
You think health care is expensive now, wait until these idiots are done with it.

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