Dara S. replied on Permalink
"misleading statements and statistics"
Mr. Potter,
I appreciate your argument about George Will's column, but encourage you to be more careful about your own claims, especially given your desire to "call out misleading statements and statistics." You write "chances are [Mr. Will] has stashed enough away that he can afford to shell out the nearly $13,000 that the average annual premium for decent family coverage costs these days... The median household income in this country is just about $50,000. I’m betting it has been a few years since Will faced paying more than a fourth of his family’s annual income—before taxes—just to cover the health insurance premiums." But the dollar amounts that you're comparing come from groups that aren't directly comparable. The "average annual premium" you reference is not an average across all families; it is for a family of four. In contrast, the mean household size is 3. I'm guessing that the "average" annual premium is a mean, not a median, and while I don't expect that the mean and median health insurance costs vary as much as the mean and median incomes, it's still not clear to me that it's appropriate to compare a mean cost with a median income. You also shift from families (for the premium cost) to households (for income); families and households are not equivalent, as the members of a household need not be related. I agree with your overall argument; I just think that you need to be more careful about these category shifts -- if you're sloppy about this, you're telling Mr. Will and others that it's OK for them to be sloppy too. And of course for some people, it may not be sloppiness; it may be a purposeful decision to mislead people by shifting among non-interchangeable categories while glossing over the fact that the categories aren't interchangeable. Thanks for your work. I was glad to see your interview with Bill Moyers, which is what lead me here. We need more people to join you in speaking out.
