POLL: How Much Have You Spent? American Confidence And Healthcare Costs

August 31, 2009 in Healthcare, Politics, reform | Comments (1)

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Today Reuters treated us to a questionably titled non-news item, Americans More Confident of Healthcare Costs. It might be one of the only times in history (backed up by Pew Research!) that Americans will be pulled in by positive vs. negative news headlines.

We all know bad news sells. But when you can use “good” news to defeat needed healthcare reform that the deep-pocketed free market opposes, so much the better. Hey, the US healthcare situation isn’t that bad, right? Right?

Wrong. The major findings from this supposedly positive gem are as follows:

  • People who make more money are more confident they can pay for medical care (wealthy, 40% greater than average; poor, 20% less than average)

 

  • People who have insurance are far more confident about paying than those who lack insurance (insured, 10% higher than average; uninsured, 80% less than average)

 If you’re wondering, like I was, what “average” is (20% confidence? 30%?), you won’t find a definition anywhere in the article.

Gary Pickens, Chief Healthcare & Science Research Officer at Thomson Reuters, sums it up nicely:

There is “a clear disparity in outlook between those with higher income levels who have insurance coverage and those who are uninsured. This gap needs to be an area of focus for healthcare professionals and policymakers.“

Um, last time I checked that was a primary driver behind healthcare reform. There is a huge gap between the haves and the have nots. That gap grows wider all the time as healthcare costs rise exponentially.

[polldaddy poll=1938486]

So I ask you, why would this so-called news story have a positive headline? Is it the same reason the New York Times let insurance companies plant op-eds masquerading as actual news stories in their vaunted publication?

And you thought propaganda was a Communist phenomenon. Hmm, maybe they ARE taking over the country! Or maybe unbiased news, whether through official or personal channels, is a thing of America past.

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One Response to “POLL: How Much Have You Spent? American Confidence And Healthcare Costs”

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  1. Comment by Aaron Sidner — August 31, 2009 at 3:35 pm  

    Failure to ask the right people the right questions. How easily the answers can change when you ask the right questions but ask the wrong people (similarly, asking the right people the wrong questions). In statistics, you have to look at your results and determine if 1) the results a significant (was there a distinguishable difference between groups) and 2) if they were meaningful. I submit to you that a lot of people have allowed themselves to become ‘dull to the blast’ (they no longer respond appropriately to obvious warning signs) because of a deluge of significant findings championed as meaningful when in actuality they are not because of the fundamental failure to ask the right people the right questions.