Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma published a press release yesterday, touting that something called the "Center for Health Economy" gave a glowing review to the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act. It's been picked up by several Tea Bagger and conservative sites.

If you'll recall, Burr, Hatch and Coburn recently introduced this legislation as part of the party's "all Obamacare, all the time" campaign for the midterm elections.

I've done some Google searching and, for the life of me, I can't find anything at all about the "Center for Health Economy". It's only when you go to the website for the release, you find out the proper name of it is the "Center for Heath and Economy" and, Googling that, you discover it's a stinktank started by a Republican operative a few weeks ago and funded by the Republicans.

From the Washington Post article:

The center aims to be nonpartisan, and Holtz-Eakin has assembled an impressive board of academics, including Mark Pauly from the Wharton School of Business, known as the father of the individual mandate, and Princeton’s Uwe Reinhardt. But for now, at least, the center relies on a start-up grant from the American Action Forum, Holtz-Eakin’s very partisan employer.

Holtz-Eakin, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and advised 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), acknowledged that conservative bias is “a fair concern.”

There is a Bing Center for Health Economics that's part of the RAND corporation, but they've published research supportive of the ACA. There's also a similar named group at Indiana-Purdue and another at the Milken Institute.

Hmm ... I wonder if using the wrong name for the Center in the press release is a way to throw off editors at news outlets that might not be paying close attention as they head towards the weekend. Or was it just an innocent mistake?

Of course, we in NC are already familiar with bogus research from "so-called non-partisan" stinktanks. We're not fooled.