- PWC are “the Oscar people” but they also audit a quarter of U.S. public companies. If they are untrustworthy, the country is in big trouble.

- Premiums will go up faster under Obamacare. This is exactly what happened in Massachusetts, and anyone who disagrees has the burden of providing refuting data.

- AHIP’s report leaves out subisidies because they are irrelevant to the point that AHIP is trying to make, which is that premiums will go up. Subsidies are indexed to wages and will quickly become trivial if premiums rise.

- Even if employers and insurers restructure their benefits to avoid the excise tax it does not mean consumers won’t see higher premiums. If Joe Cadillac stops subsidizing everyone, then everyone has to pay a bit more.

Single payer, besides being the clearly best policy choice, would carry this political advantage, that it would be a death sentence on the health care insurance industry. There wouldn’t be anyone to fund these faked up studies, or to contribute to campaigns, or to threaten to contribute to someone else’s campaign, because the industry would be defunct, and dead men write no checks.

If this name game succeeds in redefining low benefits plans as the new norm, above which you incur a penalty, it would put an artificial cap on government subsidies and allow insuresters profits to grow, because you’ll have to pay extra for full benefits, assuming you can obtain them at any price.

Taxing full benefits plans is also a direct attack on the unions who negotiated them, whose members have seen their protections and other deferred compensation gains tossed out in bankruptcy court, even though they’ve already put in the labor given in exchange for them. You’d think abject submission to Rahm’s agenda was more important than meeting his constituents’ needs.

There are less manipulative ways to control costs that don’t attempt to sell paper dresses as if they were cotton. (And that’s before we get to any of the fine print.)

They start with attacking insurance companies processes and profits, because they impose social costs that are unacceptable and more than our collective pocketbooks can bear. But that picks up only about the first 20%. Then we have to fix the system built around avoiding the limits the insurance companies artificially imposed, which rewards procedures rather than outcomes. And then there are the market abuses of drugs and medical device manufacturers.

Poor Rahm. He must find it so exasperating that Democrats might prefer to protect their health and jobs, their education and constitutional expressions of speech and assembly, more than they want to protect his coffers, which he’s stuffing with cold, hard lobbyists’ cash.

Why object now?

Unless, of course, they aren’t really objecting, but simply providing political cover for Baucus and the White House.