When I saw this headline and read this Reuters article, I was left scratching my head. My BS detecter was flashing big time.
Americans more confident on healthcare costs: poll
Fewer Americans are afraid that they will be unable to pay for healthcare services and fewer expect to postpone medical treatments due to costs, according to a Thomson Reuters survey published on Monday.
Researchers found a steady increase in people’s confidence about their ability to pay for healthcare services — it rose 12 percent between March and July this year.
The survey of 3,000 households showed, unsurprisingly, that people who made more money were more confident they could pay for medical care, and people who had insurance were far more confident about paying than those who lacked insurance.
Looking at the graph below, one would think that all Americans were more confident in their ability to pay for medical care, when in fact, the opposite is true.
The Reuters article goes on to say that, generally, higher income people and those with insurance appear to have the higher confidence in their ability to afford health care. Duh. What the article completely leaves out is that the “rising” confidence in Americans to be able to afford their health care only occurs in Americans 65 and older, by a substantial margin, which substantially skewed the overall results. Hmmm…why might that be? Oh, yeah. They have Medicare. That EEEVIL goverment Single Payer insurance plan.
From page 7 of the actual report (pdf).
Figure 3 illustrates the difference in overall confidence by respondent age group in July 2009 (expressed as a percentage difference from total sample overall confidence). Generally, consumers over 65 have the greatest confidence in their ability to pay for and access needed healthcare services over the next three months and those less than 35 have the lowest confidence. Also, statistically significant improvements in overall confidence are concentrated in the older age cohorts (Figure 4, p-value < .05). Younger adults (less than 35) had no significant improvement in confidence.
Got that? Only in the older demographic is the improvement in confidence “statistically significant.”
Further, the report doesn’t provide us any raw data, so I really have no idea what a 12% improvement means. What was the baseline number in March? Was it 500 out of 3,000 (17%) surveyed who were confident in their ability to pay? If it was 500, then a 12% increase would mean 560 out of 3,000 (20%) who were now more confident. Or was the base number 25 out of 3,000 (0.83%) ? If so, a 12% improvement means 28 people out of 3,000 ( 0.93%) now have confidence in their ability to pay. But both figures equal a 12% improvement.
You can make numbers say just about anything you want.
What’s that saying? There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
