White House Pushes Back on Health Insurance Industry Report

The White House is pushing back this morning against a new study commissioned by the health insurance industry which says the Senate Finance Committee health care overhaul bill would substantially increase the annual cost of health care for Americans.

"This is a self-serving analysis from the insurance industry ... it is hard to take it seriously," said Linda Douglass, Communications Director for the Obama administration's Office of Health Reform, in a statement to FOX News.

The study, done by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the industry group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), says that "by 2019 the cost of single [health care] coverage is expected to increase by $1500 more than it would under the current system and the cost of family coverage is expected to increase by $4000 more than it would under the current system."

Why? The report cites four areas in the Finance Committee bill that would result in a cost increase:

"- Insurance market reforms coupled with a weak coverage requirement

- A new tax on high-cost health care plans

- Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare

- New taxes on several health care sectors."

The weak coverage requirement is a significant factor that analysts across the political spectrum agree on, reports Fox's Jim Angle.

Anne Kim, Ecnomic Program Director at progressive think tank  Third Way explained to Fox News that "if the insurance companies are required to provide insurance to anyone who asks for it and are limited in the amount of premiums they can charge because that's another reform in the bill as well, what happens if you don't have a larger pool is that premiums are going to go up for everybody. You have to be able to spread the risk to as many people as possible in order to bring premiums down to take into account older, sicker folks who desperately need the insurance and to make it more affordable for those people as well."

Recent efforts in the Senate to weaken the penalties on those individuals who opt out of health insurance would prevent the insurance costs from averaging down.  The insurance industry is counting a huge number of the uninsured -- those aged 18 to 35 -- to be basically forced into buying insurance in order to keep costs down. 

Douglass rebuts that the study "completely ignores critical policies [that] will lower costs  for those that have insurance, expand coverage and provide affordable health insurance options to millions of Americans who are priced out of today's health insurance market or are locked out by unfair insurance company practices."

The Senate Finance Committee is due to vote on its $829 billion bill tomorrow.