Lewin did disclose on the second page of its report that it is part of Ingenix, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the UnitedHealth Group, but noted that Lewin has editorial control over all of its work products. The press seems to have missed the point about Lewin’s pedigree. None of the stories I saw mentioned the UnitedHealth Group connection, important context for its findings. A bit of digging would have turned up more.
Last fall, Bryant Furlow, a staff reporter for the Rio Grande Sun in Espanola, New Mexico, who moonlights as a freelancer for The Lancet Oncology and as a medical muckraker with his Web site, epi Medical News & Expose, investigated just how much of a firewall existed between Lewin and Ingenix. Furlow noted in his piece that Lewin’s October study comparing the health plans of John McCain and Barack Obama did not disclose Lewin’s connection to United. So Furlow called up Lewin to ask why.
He learned that at that time “no corporate policy has been written to protect Lewin from interference by its parent companies.” In other words, there was no formal firewall. He reported that one senior Lewin official admitted that “autonomy is too strong a word” to describe the firm’s arrangement, but she denied that there had been editorial interference. Furlow pressed Lisa Chimento, a Lewin senior vice president, about disclosing the United connection. “It didn’t occur to us that we might have to address this,” she said. “In hindsight, maybe we should have.”
This time around, Lewin didn’t make that mistake. Next time around, media outlets shouldn’t either.
A Major Flashpoint ? Or a Clever Diversion !
What I found interesting about the article written by Trudy Lieberman was not what it said but what it omitted. Physcians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) did a study on the "Public Option" and they found that if 95% of the Public Enrolled in the Public Option the American People would realize only 16% of the savings they would gain with a straight Single Payer Health Care System. The meager savings would fall far short of providing the financial resources necessary to cover the 47 + million Uninsured Americans much less address the plight of the underinsured.
PNHP boasts a membership of 5000 Physcians and is widely recognized as the Brain Trust of the Single Payer Movement. In a recent poll conducted by the University of Illinois Medical Center 59% of all US Physcians favor a Single Payer Healthcare System. Their results were publushed in the Annals of Medicine.
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/03/26/himmelstein-and-woolhandler-on-a-public-plan-option/
#1 Posted by Bob Marston, CJR on Tue 14 Apr 2009 at 07:46 PM
See my column in Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-saul6043524feb21,0,5416507.column
#2 Posted by Saul Friedman, CJR on Tue 14 Apr 2009 at 07:54 PM
Physicians for a National Health Plan (pnhp.org) has 16,000 members, not 5,000. Their web site is a superb source of health policy information.
#3 Posted by Carla Rautenberg, CJR on Tue 14 Apr 2009 at 10:06 PM
16,000 members is not 16,000 Physcians. PNHP accepts far more than practicing physcians into it's ranks. It accepts retired physcians, interns, students, labor activists and community activists.
PNHP claimed to garner the signatures of over 5000 Practicing Physcians on the petition they submitted to Obama last fall.
Be careful with your numbers or you will be called on them !
#4 Posted by Bob Marston, CJR on Wed 15 Apr 2009 at 01:13 AM
It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of energy that can go into a project just to avoid doing the right thing. The best, simplest, least costly, most effective thing we could do is expand what has been working so well for years, Medicare. You get sick, you get care, and the caregiver gets paid. Nothing could be simpler. But follow the money and you’ll find why the politicians don’t like it a bit. They get their money from insurance interests.
Jack Lohman
http://moneyedpoliticians.net
#5 Posted by Jack Lohman, CJR on Fri 17 Apr 2009 at 12:27 AM