The Heritage Foundation responded yesterday to our campaign exposing the Lewin Group's conflict of interest on health insurance reform by saying, um, the blog version of "NUH UHHH!"

From the Heritage blog: "In fact, the Lewin Group is an independent and well-respected national health care and human services policy research and consulting firm with an expertise in modeling, statistics and actuarial analysis and more than 35 years experience." (Nice work. This could stand in for "About Us" language on the Lewin Group's own website. Oh look - in fact, it's fairly close to their own description.)

What Heritage declines to address is the very point of our campaign - the fact that in 2007, the Lewin Group was purchased by UnitedHealth - a health insurance company with a track record of breaking the law and defrauding customers. And that Republicans, who use Lewin Group studies in their attempt to derail health insurance reform, have long been claiming that this firm is "independent" and "non-partisan." Sorry, but that's simply not true.

The bloggers at Heritage try to spread the blame around, too, albeit sloppily. In defending Lewin Group statistics, they quote Democrat Ron Wyden's joint op-ed with a Republican colleague, in which they wrote, "The Lewin Group [is] the gold standard of independent, health-care analysis." (Did they find this on the Lewin Group website, as well? The quote is part of their website's template footer.)

This attempt at using Wyden's comment to prop up the Lewin Group's credibility is weak, at best. The op-ed in question was written in June 2007, mere days after the sale of the Lewin Group to UnitedHealth. It refers to studies conducted long before UnitedHealth had its hands in the policy research cookie jar. Maybe the Lewin Group was once the "gold standard" of health policy research - but that's certainly not the case anymore.

Sorry, but you're going to have to try harder, Heritage.