{"id":47709,"date":"2014-10-02T12:30:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T17:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=47709"},"modified":"2014-10-02T10:42:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:42:36","slug":"chanting-points-memo-only-4-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=47709","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: “Only 4.5%!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine on Facebook (who admits he based it on a statement by Senator Michelle Benson, on the Dave Thompson show) notes the wierdness of the state’s math in arriving at the “4.5% increase in MNSure Premiums” number that the media is trumpeting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He put it this way:\u00a0 If a fast food restaurant serves 500 customers and has $5,000 in the till at the end of the day, that’s an average of $10 per person.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If a coffee shop next door has 5 customers and makes a grand total of $25, they averaged $5 per sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what was the average amount spent by customers to those two stores?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. $7.50 – the average of $10 and $5?\u00a0 Or…<\/li>\n
  2. $9.95 – $5,025 in total receipts divided by 505 customers?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you’re a Democrat, you picked “1” – which\u00a0is the average price<\/em> of two items, but is not the average amount spent<\/em> by the customers\u00a0 If you undestand economics, you picked “2”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    What the state has done – and the media has reported more or less uncritically – is tell us the average price<\/em> of the plans (that are still on the market).\u00a0\u00a0Not <\/em>the average amount customers will have to spend to stay in the exchange – which includes nearly 2\/3 of all MNSure customers who lost their lower-priced Preferred One plans, and who will be paying at least 20% more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    The state’s spin is dishonest.\u00a0 The media uncritically running the spin is an abdication of their purported job of keeping government honest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A friend of mine on Facebook (who admits he based it on a statement by Senator Michelle Benson, on the Dave Thompson show) notes the wierdness of the state’s math in arriving at the “4.5% increase in MNSure Premiums” number that the media is trumpeting. He put it this way:\u00a0 If a fast food restaurant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,108,311],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14","category-chanting-points-memo","category-mnsure-debacle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47709"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47713,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47709\/revisions\/47713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}