In the midst of complaining in an Aug. 13 NewsBusters post that CBS had on Jonathan Cohn, “senior editor of the left-wing magazine, The New Republic,” to fact-check claims about health care reform plans (TNR’s publisher, Iraq war supporter Martin Peretz, would be surprised to see his magazine described as “left-wing,” given that he has been denounced by actual left-wingers), Kyle Drennen writes in response to the claim that people will be able to maintain their current health insurance under reform:
Despite Cohn’s assertions that glossed over the concern, a study by The Lewin Group found that the health care plan: “If fully implemented in 2011, we estimate that about 103.9 million people would become covered under the newly established public plan. Coverage under private insurance would decline by 83.4 million people. This is a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private insurance (currently 172.5 million people).”
Drennen failed to note that the Lewin Group study was commissioned by the anti-reform Heritage Foundation, or that the Lewin Group is owned by an insurance company, UnitedHealth Group, which has a stake in not wanting people to switch from private insurance.
Further, Drennen made no mention of a Congressional Budget Office study, which found that only 2 million people would switch from employer coverage to the public plan.