Gray pushes falsehood that Sebelius “sat on” a health care report “until after the vote”

From the May 7 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program:

BECK: Who would have -- I mean, besides you and me and almost everybody else that's within the sound of my voice -- who would have seen that coming?

GRAY: Besides that?

BECK: Yeah.

GRAY: The U.S. government -- the Health and Human Services Department.

BECK: Wait a minute. Hmm?

GRAY: Yeah, they had a report that Kathleen Sebelius sat on for I think it was three weeks or a month, until after the vote, that came out and said all of these things.

GRAY: Oh, yeah. Costs are probably going to go up. They're going to skyrocket. Many, many hospitals will probably close. A lot of people will lose their insurance because their health care provider will drop the coverage. The big companies will probably get rid of their health insurance.

BECK: Hold it, just a second. You're saying that the government did something underhanded?

GRAY: No. No, I -- what I think happened was they came up with the report, and then, you know how paperwork is. I mean, it just --

BECK: Just piles up.

GRAY: -- just piles up --

BECK: Just piles up.

GRAY: -- and I'm sure that they didn't find it until two or three days after the vote.

BECK: That's an outrage. Where's the press on this one?

Gray's claim comes from debunked Spectator report

Spectator publishes anonymously sourced report claiming HHS withheld report on health care reform legislation. On April 26, the American Spectator's Washington Prowler blog forwarded the claim that a report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) indicating that the recently passed health care bill “would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers” was “submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill” and that “Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.” The Spectator attributed the claim to unnamed “career HHS sources.”

CMS chief actuary was already on record as saying his office “will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame.” In a March 20 letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, days before the final vote on health care reform, CMS chief actuary Richard S. Foster wrote that he was unable to comply with the Republican leadership's request for an updated analysis due to the “very tight time frame” and “complexity of the legislation.” Foster referred McConnell to a January 8 memorandum that provided an analysis of the Senate health care reform the House would be voting on, adding that while it didn't take into consideration changes made in the reconciliation legislation that accompanied the House vote on the Senate bill, the January 8 memo would be “generally similar” to an updated analysis.

Time: Recently released CMS report is “nearly identical” to January 8 report. In an April 23 post on Time's Swampland blog, staff writer Kate Pickert reported that the newer CMS report is “nearly identical” to the CMS “report released January 8, 2010,” adding: “Some of his figures changed in the interim -- he wrote about the Senate bill in January and this week's report includes changes made by the reconciliation package that altered the Senate bill -- but overall, Foster's assessment is the same.”

Foster: Spectator report “completely inaccurate.” The Washington Post's David Weigel reported on April 27:

“If this issue hadn't consumed my entire day so far,” said Richard S. Foster, chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “I would have found it fairly amusing.” The article, he said, was “completely inaccurate.”

“We began working on the reconciliation bill for the health reform legislation once it was publicly issued on March 18 -- three days before the House vote took place on March 21,” said Foster. “Because of the details and complexity of the legislation, it wasn't possible to estimate the package before the Senate vote.

”We began work on the estimates right away, but we didn't finalize them until the afternoon of April 22. We finished our memorandum on the health reform act later that same day and immediately sent it to those individuals and organizations that had requested it, including Congressional staff, HHS staff, and media representatives. Consistent with the Office of the Actuary's longstanding independent role on behalf of Congress, we did not seek approval or clearance from HHS (or anyone else) before issuing our analysis."

HHS is looking for corrections from Big Government and other sites.

In emails to Spectator editor, Foster decisively debunked claims, demanded corrections. In emails to Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. that were obtained by Media Matters, Foster called Prowler's April 26 report “completely inaccurate” and wrote that their April 28 follow-up report “continues to misrepresent the facts of the situation. Foster made clear that:

We didn't have access to the health care reconciliation bill until it was publicly issued on March 18, which was 3 days before the House vote took place on March 21. Because of the complexity of the reconciliation changes, it wasn't possible to estimate the package prior to the House or Senate votes. We began work on the estimates right away, but we didn't finalize them until the afternoon of April 22.

In both emails, Foster requested corrections, which he wrote would demonstrate that the Spectator is ”interested in accurate reporting" and is not “a tabloid-like publication, specializing in false accusations.”

Spectator now claims report wasn't “submitted for approval”

Even Spectator no longer claiming HHS “sat on” a completed “report.” While Gray stated that Sebelius “sat on” a completed “report,” even the Spectator is no longer making that claim. An April 28 Prowler post stated: “The Prowler reported via sources inside Health and Human Services that data from the study that indicated that costs would hit consumers in the pocketbook was made available to the senior officials in HHS, prior to final passage of the legislation in the House. The report never stated that it was submitted for approval.” That contradicts its April 26 claim that the report “had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.”