April 7, 2013

Another Reason Not To Trust The Braintrust

Scaife's Tribune-Review today published an op-ed explaining
Why states should say “No” to ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.
As part of their argument, they use some research from a well-known think tank:
An analysis by Grace-Marie Turner of the nonprofit Galen Institute (funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries) provides some insights.
Ha.  You see where this is going, don't you?

According to The Bridge ProjectPhRMA (the trade group representing the above mentioned "pharmaceutical and medical industries") has given $101,125 (adjusted for inflation, $107,913.74) to the Galen Institute from 2008 to 2010.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to point out that Galen's received some financial support from the industry it is, in turn, supporting with it's own research.  But do I need to point out that over a longer period of time (1998 to 2011) the Galen Institute's received even more money, $480,000 (adjusted for inflation, $569,978) from the Sarah Scaife Foundation?

The same foundation controlled by the owner of the paper publishing the op-ed?

Why qualify the story by pointing out that PhRMA money supports, in part, the Galen Institute while ignoring the much larger pile of money (by the way, that's about 4.78 times as large unadjusted or about 5.28 times as large adjusted for inflation) channeled to Galen by a Scaife Foundation?

Or maybe the answer is obvious.

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