A doctor in Republican Congressman Dave Reichert's district just sent over this PDF of a letter he received—at taxpayer expense—encouraging him to join Reichert in opposing the Democrats' health insurance reform plans.

Note the fine print:

The letter attempts to scare doctors into opposing health insurance reform by telling them their reimbursement rates will be lower—in other words, they'll earn less money—if the Democrats get their way.

The doctor who sent me the letter was not alarmed, and was mainly disgusted by Reichert's other arguments against reform, which included mention of a discredited study by The Lewin Group (which Reichert misleadingly calls "an independent research organization") allegedly showing that the Democrats' reform effort would push 114 million Americans off of private health insurance. Writes the doctor:

You probably know all this, but The Lewin Group is anything but "an independent research organization." They are owned by an insurer, United Health Group, and put out scary sounding poll results at the insurer's behest. The Washington Post called bullshit on the 100 million plus figure of people "losing health care" and even The Lewin Group now estimates it's only 88 million. That was in July, but Reichert still uses the 114 million number of forced health care conversions as of this letter dated Aug 31. By the way, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11-12 million may voluntarily switch—so only an order of magnitude inaccuracy in Reichert's letter.

The next amusing part of Reichert's letter is that, while he attributes the 114 million number to Lewin, he then proceeds to take that number as gospel, citing the "vast erosion of private health coverage caused by a government-run plan."

And finally, his jab at comparative effectiveness research—this is called "evidence based medicine" by those who attempt to use it, i.e. science. Not surprisingly, Reichert opposes it.