Maybe Ceci Connolly's "reporting" just didn't do enough to make AHIP satisfied that WaPo was pushing the AHIP line. At any rate, lest anything get lost in translation, they just put AHIP's Karen Ignagni on the op-ed page.
It has been alleged that health insurers commissioned a report recently from PricewaterhouseCoopers as part of a last-ditch effort to kill health-care reform. A relentless public relations campaign has attacked the messengers -- our association, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and PricewaterhouseCoopers -- as a way of discrediting the findings that major provisions in the Senate Finance Committee proposal will have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of health-care coverage.
Let me be clear and direct: Health plans continue to strongly support reform. In fact, last year we proposed new insurance market rules and consumer protections to achieve universal coverage, remove restrictions on preexisting conditions and end the practice of basing premiums on health status or gender. We firmly believe that all the cost concerns the report raised can be resolved.
"It has been alleged"! Indeed, a severe crime against AHIP has been committed by all the critics who "allege" that PWC's cherrypicking of parts of the reform, and exclusion of others, made for a less than honest appraisal by PWC. Which PWC admitted, more or less discrediting their own report. Good thing Fred Hiatt is there to save the day for AHIP.
Ignagni then goes on to repeat pretty much all of the selective "findings" of PWC. But no, this isn't out of any intent to kill healthcare reform. Not at all. They're not threatening astronomical rate increases for Americans if Congress insists on implementing reforms because they want to. No, really. They're looking out for the American consumer. Really. Ceci Connolly reported it, more than once, so it must be true.