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PREMIUM BS FROM THE LA TIMES

The LA Times delighted Lefty health care wonks yesterday with an article entitled Workers’ health insurance costs soar. Here’s the money quote (as it were):

Workers with job-based coverage for their families saw earnings rise 3% from 2001 to 2005, while their health insurance premium contribution increased 30% … The average cost nationally of family coverage during the period increased nearly $2,500, to $10,728 from $8,281.

Man that seems like a big jump. And it would be—-if it were true. But it would appear that the Times has once again proven Jefferson correct:

The quoted figures came from  this study, which clearly states (see table 3) that the average employee paid only 24% of the total premium for family coverage. 

In other words, the average employee paid $1,987 for family insurance coverage in 2001. By 2005, that figure had increased to $2,574.

So, the actual increase paid by employees was $587, or $147 per year. No one wants to pay more for insurance, but this is not the stuff of a Dickens novel.

This reality has not, of course, stopped the usual suspects from quoting this disingenuously written article and tut-tutting about how awful things are.

These are not serious people.

Posted 02 May 2008 † Catron § Insurance BS ‡ Comments (7)

PROGRESSIVE PARROTS SQUAWK

In addition to being incapable of objective, non-partisan analysis, progressive health care wonks are utterly predictable.  They can be counted on to mindlessly denounce any reform proposal from any Republican—-regardless of its merits.

So, their response to John McCain’s newly fleshed out health care agenda was no surprise. They reflexively repeated their talking points like so many parrots screeching in unison. One of the first to squawk was Jonathan Cohn:

A big problem with this scheme, as critics like me pointed out, was that it wouldn’t do much for people who were already sick. Insurance companies generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with “pre-existing conditions,” since they represent such bad financial risks.

Cohn is, of course, reverting to the hoary adverse selection/risk pool argument that sounds very wonkish and intellectual but which, as I explain here, is based on a false premise. Ezra Klein mindlessly mimics the meme:

Somewhere in the house, a phone is ringing. It’s your old insurance company … Sorry, they say, but your family just doesn’t fit their risk profile … It is a call — or, sometimes, merely a letter — that millions of Americans have received … These Americans are rejected for health insurance because they were sick once.

This dope, in a just world, would be delivering pizzas. Merrill Goozman, on the other hand, does not have Klein’s excuse of sheer naiveté. He knows the truth and still chooses to provide this variation on the disingenuous theme:

What was most notable about presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s health care plan unveiled Tuesday was the campaign’s unrealistic assessment of its impact on people with life-threatening conditions like cancer, the millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetics …

Blah, blah, blah, blah … If John McCAin had come out for free universal health care, covering everyone from cradle to grave, these people would have found some cheesy excuse to denounce it.

Why? Because John McCain is a Republican and it is an election year.

Posted 02 May 2008 † Catron § McCain BS § Political BS § Progressive BS ‡ Comments (1)

MCCAIN VS. OBAMA ON HEALTH CARE

McCain’s health care plan is by no means perfect, but it is vastly superior to that of the probable Democrat presidential nominee. Here’s an excerpt from my American Spectator article comparing McCain’s health care reform agenda to Obama’s:

McCain would emphasize consumer choice, markets and tax reform, while eschewing government-run health care. As he put it on April 28, at the launch of his “Call to Action” tour, “I am convinced that the wrong way to go is to turn over your lives to the government and hope it will all be fine.” Obama, on the other hand, places considerable faith in the state, favoring the shopworn tools of big-government liberalism: central planning, oppressive bureaucracy, and the creation of new entitlement programs.

To read the rest of my brilliant effusions on this subject, go here.

Posted 01 May 2008 † Catron § McCain BS § Obama BS § Political BS ‡ Comments (0)

MEDICAID BS FROM FAMILIES USA

As I have said before, one of the reasons liberals are so hard to take seriously on health care is that they cannot resist the temptation to fudge the facts. Linda Gorman has written a good piece about a recent manifestation of this progressive proclivity:

If Families USA were a newspaper, it would be a supermarket tabloid carrying articles about alien abductions.

Families USA is promulgating the fiction that the evil Bush Administration is pushing ”Medicaid cuts” that will end civilization as we know it:

Medicaid rule changes put in place by the Bush Administration will cost Colorado more than $787.2 million … Those lost Medicaid funds will eliminate an estimated 3,500 jobs and an accompanying $134.9 million in wages, and cost the state an estimated $381 million in lost business activity.

This is, of course, pure, unadulterated BS. No one is pushing Medicaid cuts. In fact, the Bush administration has actually proposed an increase of $12 to $ 13 billion in Medicaid funding. Here’s what Families USA is griping about:

What the Bush Administration is proposing is a slightly smaller budget increase, about 7.1 percent rather than 7.4 percent.

This tactic of representing increases as cuts is, of course, a standard tactic of the Left. Which is why no thinking person should take “progressive” health care reformers seriously. They are congenitally incapable of playing it straight.

[HT WeStandFirm]

Posted 30 April 2008 † Catron § Progressive BS ‡ Comments (0)

LONGEVITY STUDY: ANOTHER LAME RESPONSE

Last week, I predicted that the recent Harvard study on life expectancy would produce all manner of disingenuous stories in the establishment media and the blogosphere. While this prediction didn’t exactly require the prescience of Nostradamus, it is nonetheless gratifying to be proven right.

The award for the dumbest response goes to AmericaBlog, where Bush is blamed for isolated declines that occurred before he became President, and the award for the most tendentious response goes to the NYT.  Bryan Caplan captures its essence at EconLog:

I while back I argued that it’s easy to detect media bias from headlines alone. A recent NYT piece on life expectancy makes my point for me better than I ever could. The facts: U.S. life expectancy for all income levels rose. The headline: “Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation.”

Russell Roberts, over at Cafe Hayek,  also comments on the essential lameness of the NYT piece:

Evidently, smoking, obesity and diabetes are bad for your health. So is sickness. Death is bad for your life expectancy. So discovers the New York Times.

It is just this kind of journalism, as practiced at the NYT and many other “news” organizations, that is causing thinking readers to relegate the bird cage liners to the dust bin of history.

Posted 29 April 2008 † Catron § Journalistic BS § Statistical BS ‡ Comments (6)

HEALTH CARE: WHAT AMERICANS REALLY THINK

The establishment media ignored it, presumably because its findings didn’t fit the party line, but a recent Gallup survey showed that a majority of Americans are satisfied with the quality of their health care. In fact, as the following table shows, the percentage of people saying their care is “excellent” or “good” has actually increased from 80% to 83% since 2001:

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The survey showed a similar trend in attitudes about health care coverage. The following table shows that the percentage of people saying their coverage is “excellent” or “good” has increased from 68% to 70% since 2001:

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The survey even showed that a majority of Americans (57%) are satisfied with the total cost of their health care.  So, why do politicians, the media, and “progressive” policy wonks continue to yammer about how Americans are mad as hell about the health care system?

[HT Scalpel]

Posted 27 April 2008 † Catron § Reform BS § Statistical BS ‡ Comments (4)

I TRIED TO WRITE A POST

But this character and several accomplices kept calling …

David Catron

… and I succumbed.

Posted 26 April 2008 † Catron § Miscellaneous BS ‡ Comments (0)

OBAMA MANDATE AD CONFUSES KRUGMAN

Krugman is trashing Obama again.  Maybe anxiety about upcoming layoffs at the NYT has made him bitter:

During the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary fight, the Obama campaign ran a TV ad repeating the dishonest charge that the Clinton plan would force people to buy health insurance they can’t afford.

Hillary does indeed want to foist a draconian mandate on the electorate, and Krugman fails to explain what was so “dishonest” about the ad. He does, however, produce one of weirdest non sequiturs I have ever encountered:

The question Democrats … should be asking themselves is this: now that the magic has dissipated, what is the campaign about? More generally, what are the Democrats for in this election?

In other words, Obama’s campaign has no rationale and the Democrats must be confused if they can’t see that. Krugman and others want to know why they are allowing the race to go on.

Well, dude, its called “democracy.” It isn’t neat and it isn’t pretty, but it beats defering to the judgment of some lickspittle hoping to find work in a second Clinton Administration.

Posted 25 April 2008 † Catron § Hillary BS § Journalistic BS § Obama BS ‡ Comments (0)

DEMS HEDGE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

A few months ago, I wrote that the outcome of the SCHIP debate portended the demise of health care “reform” as envisioned by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It appears that this reality has finally dawned on congressional Democrats. Per The Hill:

Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential candidates, saying that even if their party controls the White House and Congress, sweeping change will be difficult.

But what about the grandiose promises of their presidential candidates?

‘We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,’ said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a Finance Committee member and an Obama supporter, referring to the presidential candidates’ healthcare plans. ‘What they are doing is … laying out their ambitions.’

What they are actually “laying out,” of course, is BS. Neither Clinton nor Obama really care what they can actually accomplish. They mainly want to keep their credulous supporters on board—-people like the ever-clueless Ezra Klein:

I’ve got some calls out for clarification from the relevant offices. But in general, this articles reads strangely to me … The quotes speak more to the difficulty of the issue than anything else.

Klein is, of course, less interested in “clarification” than in reassurance. He wants someone to tell him that he’s not a dupe. But he, along with the rest of the ironically-styled ”reality-based” cummunity, has been rolled. Health care reform, for Democrats, is a slogan rather than a policy goal.

Posted 25 April 2008 † Catron § Political BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (0)

BUSH RESPONSIBLE FOR LONGEVITY DECLINE?

As I pointed out yesterday, the Harvard longevity study was bound to produce some tendentious responses. But I must say that even I was not prepared for anything as dumb  as this post from AmericaBlog:

Another proud legacy of the Bush administration, news you’d probably expect to hear from developing nations, not the United States of America in the year 2008.

Er … the statistical data used in this study was for the years 1983 through 1999. You may recall that G.W. Bush became President of the United States in January of 2001. 

[HT JustOneMinute]

Posted 23 April 2008 † Catron § Blog BS § Statistical BS ‡ Comments (1)