Wednesday afternoon, David Postman at his blog took a look at the credibility of the report by actuarial consulting firm Milliman that is used by the Reject 67 campaign to contend that enactment of the law could result in an increase in the average consumer's insurance rates of up to $205 per household in Washington, or $650 million in the aggregate, each year.
Postman points out that Milliman is also involved in the Insurance Commissioner's efforts to pencil out a universal health care plan. So, he ponders, if Kreidler is aligned with the pro 67 campaign saying insurance rates will not increase, but Milliman says rates will increase, where is the credibility, and does criticism of Milliman's impartiality over its R-67 projections call into question its impartiality in any of its projects, including Kreidler's universal health care plan?
Good question. He also posts a response from the pro campaign's spokeswoman, who predictably objects that the Milliman report was commissioned by the Reject 67 group, and that national "consumer groups" don't think Milliman is an independent source.
Well, now. Of course the report was commissioned by the campaign. And if its findings came out otherwise, no one would have ever heard about it. Not much different from a candidate's campaign commissioning a poll, and then releasing its results when it finds out the results confirmed the candidate's lead. Why would anyone else spend the money to obtain a consulting report to test the hypothesis the campaign hopes to establish? And then reference the report when it turns out to confirm it?
And of course Milliman works with the insurance industry. It's an consulting firm made up of actuaries. They provide independent reviews of ratemaking and reserving decisions that insurers make. I know from sitting on the Labor & Industries Workers' Compensation Advisory Committee that L&I has for years used Milliman to obtain outside actuarial advice on its $12 billion industrial insurance fund.
Milliman, based in Seattle (not Wisconsin, has some reports have suggested), is one of the largest property & casualty actuarial consulting services in the world. I have a hard time believing it would stake its professional reputation and credibility on cooking up a dummy report to parrot the preferred positions of a political campaign on a statewide issue in an election year.
To dispute the report's conclusion, critique the merits or reasonableness of the methodology and data. Hire another actuarial firm to review the reasonableness of the approach. The other stuff -- red herrings.
