Monday, December 05, 2011

Stupid Media Tricks

As we've seen so often, the media just loves its memes, to the exclusion, unfortunately, of clarity and intellectual honesty.

The latest case in point:

Health claim denials top Ohio insurance complaints

"A newspaper's analysis shows the most common complaints received by the Ohio Department of Insurance come from people who had health claims denied."

And this is news, why?

Well, because if we're looking to supplant the current private-industry model with a government-run one (and we are), what better way to demonize that pre-existing model than by pointing out how (apparently) unfair it it is.

Now, I was told that there'd be no math, but I find this interesting:

Out of the 3,100-odd claims covered by the report, "43 percent were from people whose insurers would not pay a medical bill." Now, there are an estimated 11 and a half million Buckeyes. If we take the (disputed) percentage of 15% uninsured, that leaves almost 10 million insured Ohioans, generating 1,300 claims.

That means that .0001% of Buckeyes had a big enough claims problem that they actually filed a complaint.

Ooooh.

By the way, the same report indicates that the Department of Insurance found less than 20% of those complaints credible.

Here's a question for the rocket surgeon-cum-reporter:

How many of these claims were disputed because the insured couldn't be bothered to either read his/her policy, or to stay in-network, or to have disclosed pre-existing conditions?

Here's a clue:

"The newspaper says the number of complaints is small compared with the millions of health claims handled in Ohio."

Oh, then why didn't you say so in the first place?

[Hat Tip: FoIB Holly R]
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