This week, the Washington Post revealed that the Lewin Group - a firm commonly cited by Republican lawmakers as an "independent" and "nonpartisan" think tank - is owned by a health insurance company -- and a badly behaving one, at that.

The Washington Post:

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association, a physician's group, of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied its parent company and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "usual and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-networkcare.

Why didn't Republicans reveal this conflict of interest? The answer is simple. Many Republicans in Congress are out to stop health care reform at all costs -- not because it's good or bad for the country, but for cheap political gain. Republican Senator Jim Demint called it the President's "Waterloo" and said, "It will break him."

Playing politics with health reform is simply unacceptable - and using insurance company-provided "statistics" to do it is just plain wrong. It's time for Republicans in Congress to come clean about their sources. Click here to tell the Republicans in this video to stop citing the Lewin Group as an "independent" source: http://www.seiu.org/lewin