Did Obama Hide ObamaCare Report Prior To Vote?

An interesting question has been raised about a recently released (to the public) report from HHR. The report indicated that, far from reducing costs, ObamaCare would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers. According to the American Spectator, that report was delivered to the office of HHS head Kathleen Sebelius a full week before the bill was voted on. Sources inside the HHS claim the report was suppressed because administration officials didn't want to "influence the vote."
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/26/what-lies-beneath

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote -- the review by the secretary's office reportedly took less than three days -- and bore a note that the analysis was not the official position of the Obama administration.

I should note that the report is being energetically denied by those concerned. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Medicare and Medicaid Office of the Actuary (the group that issued the report) says the Spectator report is "completely inaccurate" and had this to say:

"We began working on the reconciliation bill for the health reform legislation once it was publicly issued on March 18 – three days before the House vote took place on March 21," Foster said in a statement. "Because of the details and complexity of the legislation, it wasn't possible to estimate the package before the Senate vote. We began work on the estimates right away, but we didn't finalize them until the afternoon of April 22.

"We finished our memorandum on the health reform act later that same day and immediately sent it to those individuals and organizations that had requested it, including congressional staff, HHS staff and media representatives," he concluded. "Consistent with the Office of the Actuary's longstanding independent role on behalf of Congress, we did not seek approval or clearance from HHS (or anyone else) before issuing our analysis."

I am always inherently leery of any report that relies solely upon anonymous sources for the facts, as we lack the ability to judge the reliability of those sources. So I don't know if the charges are true or not.

But it IS interesting. ObamaCare opponents disputed the official PresBo-line that it would reduce costs, and this report indicates we were right. The possible scandal that PresBo knew about it before the vote but suppressed it... Well, let's just say that it isn't unbelievable and leave it at that.