Pushback at Insurance Companies: NYT Editorial Dismantles Insurers' Report

An editorial in today's New York Times pretty well takes apart the critical report commissioned by the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans and prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, calling it "so deliberately skewed to produce frightening results that it deserves little credence." It looks only at elements that would tend to drive up premiums while ignoring everything that would tend to bring them down. The editors note a particularly glaring omission:

"The industry report made no effort to factor in the effect of proposed subsidies that would help millions of people to buy their own insurance on those exchanges. The subsidies would help people earning less than four times the poverty level, or about $88,000 annually for a family of four."

The editorial argues well that the reform bill will probably bring premiums down. Read it here.