A Sept. 27 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover begins with a hyperbolic claim:
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study of employer-provided health insurance plans, the ObamaCare health reform law could have accounted for as much as 50 percent of the spike in insurance premiums in 2011.
Cover then immediately contradicts that with the following two paragraphs:
The Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which specializes in health care issues, found that health insurance premiums had jumped by 9 percent in 2011, up from a 5 percent annual increase since 2007.
Drew Altman, president and CEO of Kaiser, first said that the premium increase was not because of ObamaCare but then went on to say that the ObamaCare law probably accounted for 1 to 2 percentage points of that increase, which he further explained in a column today (see below).
One to two percentage points of nine percentage points, in case you weren’t counting, is not “as much as 50 percent.”
Cover then embarks on some extremely creative mathematics to try and prove his opening paragraph correct:
According to the study, health insurance premiums for employer-provided coverage – the most common type – have been rising at a steady rate of about 5 percent each year.
This year, however, that rate jumped to 9 percent for family coverage and 8 percent for single coverage.
This means that ObamaCare was responsible for anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of the 4 percentage point jump in insurance premiums this year.
Got that? Five percent of the 9 percent increase doesn’t count. By magically reducing that increase to 4 percent, Cover can then invent a line of attack by blaming Obamacare for “as much as 50 percent of the spike in insurance premiums in 2011” — even though it has no basis in reality.
But then, it appears the truth is becoming less and less important to CNS these days.