November 15, 2014
This one should be in the “you must be kidding category.” The New York Times has a front page story with the headline, “Cost of Coverage Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to Increase in 2015.” Hmm, that would mean that 2015 is just like 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 … you get the idea. Costs of health care have always gone up, apparently the Affordable Care Act didn’t change this fact. NYT headlines ain’t what they used to be.
The substance of the article, insofar as there is any, is not much better. There are places in the country where some plans had large increases in prices. That is unfortunate, but if the NYT had a bit more experienced reporters, they would know that there were frequent incidents of large increases in insurance premiums before the ACA. Given that there are literally thousands of different plans, it would be surprising if some did not have large increases.
While the article focused exclusively on the plans and areas with large increases (which are mostly sparsely populated cities and counties), it could have also focused on the areas in its own chart with small premium increases or even decreases. For example, the chart shows that the average premium in Cook County, IL (which includes Chicago) raised its premium by 1.0 percent in 2015. The average premium in Cuyahoga County, OH (which includes Cleveland) fell by 1.6 percent. And, the average premium in Bergen County, just outside of New York City, fell by 0.9 percent.
Information on the overall pattern of premium increases is news. The New York Times really didn’t need to hire reporters to know that some insurers raised their rates on some plans by a large amount.
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