Indeed who the h*ll you they?
If you look at the website, available funding information, domain registration and anything at all about them you find that they have worked hard from the beginning to be completely obscure about who and what they are.
A look at the AGE website's "solutions outside of political parties and ideological partisanship" you find that their proposed solutions to health care costs are
- "tort reform" - freeing medical corporations from worrying about being penalized for bad practices and actions. This policy is beloved by the right despite, a) lawsuits costs are only 2% of America's helath care bill, and b) being show to be ineffective in saving costs where it has already been in place for a decade (Texas). Corporatists just hate accountability.
- Continue banning any drug imports. Those lower cost Canadian drugs are killers I tell you!
- Do no, repeat NOT, reduce the payment rate of Medicare Part D that pays drug companies whatever they ask for.
- But don't increase funding for the State Children’s Insurance Program, (SCHIP)!
Their Big Idea on energy costs? Not clear - it is simply to endorse whatever Matt Salmon (R-AZ) is proposing.
How to jump start the Jobs Crisis? Get this - expand the H-1 Visa Program and import more skilled foreign workers.
I could go on, but this "non-political": agenda is identical to those of the Chamber of Commerce, ALEC, and the numerous mouthpiece organizations of the Koch family, of which this clearly is one.
Oh, and about that study. What academic department and institution did it come from? Why the Economics Department of George Mason University.
The very department that has received $30 million from Charles Koch over the years, honoring him with a Doctorate in return, and hosts the Mercatus Center - an 'institute' with staff personally approved by Charles Koch and funded by him.
Check it out for youself
Astro-Turf by the truck load.