{"id":61058,"date":"2016-11-21T11:02:48","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T17:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61058"},"modified":"2016-11-20T11:02:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T17:02:59","slug":"the-strib-lowering-their-own-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=61058","title":{"rendered":"The Strib: Lowering Their Own Bar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Strib “reported”, after a fashion, about\u00a0attitudes about Obamacare after an election where it was primarily responsible for ejecting the DFL from power<\/a> in the Minnesota Senate.<\/p>\n

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

And it’s either a masterpiece of selective fact, or some fairly incurious reporting:<\/p>\n

\n

Anxiety is greatest among Minnesotans with preexisting medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurance companies could simply deny them coverage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is technically true.<\/p>\n

After which, in Minnesota at least, they would get insurance from one of the state-subsizied high risk plans.<\/p>\n

Before MNSure, 92% of Minnesotans were insured, via the private market, a public plan, or some combination. \u00a0 It was the highest share in the nation. \u00a0 Of the 8% who didn’t have insurance, the vast majority were people who didn’t\u00a0want\u00a0<\/em>insurance – mostly young, mostly healthy. \u00a0There were exceptions – but they were few, rare, and mostly the product of poor information and a pre-Obama media who were actively pitching the “47 million uninsured Americans…” narrative.<\/p>\n

Today, the state says half as many Minnesotans are uninsured – but networks have shrunk (in vast swathes of Minnesota, only one plan is available), premiums have skyrocketed for individual members (like me!), \u00a0people could\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>keep their doctor (The Lightworker’s promises notwithstanding…)<\/p>\n

So why is the Strib story – a “Team Report” by Jeremy Olson, Christopher Snowbeck and Glenn Howatt, no less – either so slanted or uninformed?<\/p>\n

To borrow a Glenn Reynolds phrase – if you treat them as DFL operatives with bylines, it all makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Strib “reported”, after a fashion, about\u00a0attitudes about Obamacare after an election where it was primarily responsible for ejecting the DFL from power in the Minnesota Senate. And it’s either a masterpiece of selective fact, or some fairly incurious reporting: Anxiety is greatest among Minnesotans with preexisting medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurance companies could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,4,130,189,311,263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-media","category-tc-media-bias","category-minnesotas-ministry-of-truth","category-mnsure-debacle","category-narrative-for-sale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61058","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=61058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61059,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61058\/revisions\/61059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}