It may not be news that politicians dissemble. But that’s no
reason not to care about what a president says. Let us,
therefore, unpack last Saturday’s presidential radio address.
President Obama said he had met with some of the insurance
companies two days earlier and said that “they couldn’t give me a
straight answer as to why they keep arbitrarily and massively
raising premiums — by as much as 60 percent in states like
Illinois.”
Sixty percent! Could that be true? Actually it’s not (see
below), but let us examine the president’s rhetoric first,
because a clever rhetorician can, sometimes, hide his
dissembling.
What does “states like Illinois” mean? Are there states
like Illinois? Is Alaska like Illinois? Rhode Island? Michigan?
Could President Obama have meant that there are other states in
which insurance companies have also raised premiums by as much as
60 percent? Please. You know he didn’t mean that, because if he
had, he wouldn’t have missed the chance to name them.
The proper formulation for what he seemed to be
saying would have been that insurance companies had raised
premiums “by as much as 60 percent in a number of states,
including Illinois.” His use of “like” was — sort of —
shorthand for “including.”
But “including” is also commonly misused (mistakenly or
deliberately) to imply that there are more items on a list than
those named, as when a person with two degrees says, “I have a
number of academic degrees, including a B.A. and a Ph.D.”
You could, properly, say “a number of scandals engulfed the
Clinton Administration, including Whitewater, Troopergate,
Travelgate, and Monicagate.” You would not say (I hope),
“Goldilocks had a run-in with some bears, including the Papa
Bear, the Mama Bear, and the Baby Bear” — unless, perhaps, you
were the president and your children’s version contained a number
of additional bears, including Smokey Bear, PC Bear, Hopey Bear,
and Changie Bear.
Misusing “like” and “including” is not fatal. It’s just
careless (English teachers used to take points off for it) or, in
President Obama’s case probably, deliberately deceptive.
But back to Illinois. According to the March 4, 2010
Chicago Tribune, “Consumers in Illinois who lose their
jobs and have no other option but to buy their own health
insurance will get socked this year with premium increases of up
to 60 percent….”
Whoa! The president went from that to “they keep
arbitrarily and massively raising premiums — by as much as 60
percent… .”
What the Chicago Tribune is saying is that
individuals who lost their company health insurance will
have to pay 60 percent more for an individual policy
than they had been paying (out of pocket) for coverage under the
company’s policy.
“Out of pocket” is important here: it is well known (even,
one must assume, in the White House) that employers who pay for
their workers’ health insurance pay their workers less than they
would if they were not paying for that insurance. Indeed, that
has been a central point of contention in the health care debate.
A worker is worth only so much. He can be paid either in cash or
in benefits (often untaxed), or partly in each. According to the
Chicago Tribune’s story, “Big firms commonly pay about
$1,000 a month [for health insurance] per employee, with the
individual employee paying about 20 percent to 30 percent of that
amount.”
Some employees may not focus on who’s really footing the
health insurance bill. Others may be well aware that their
employer is paying 70 to 80 percent of the premiums, but know
also that those funds are really wages that are being snuck out
to the insurance companies without their having to pay income
taxes on them.
Company health insurance policies are different from
individual policies for a variety of reasons, and so their
premiums will also differ.
What the president was doing was like comparing Goldilocks
to Goldfinger. That’s a good rhetorical trick, if you can get
away with it.
Polls indicate the president can’t. So do recent
elections.
So when the president said in his radio address, “If you
like the insurance plan you have now, you can keep it,” people
probably didn’t believe him.
And when he said, “Doctors and patients will have more
control over their health care decisions,” people probably didn’t
believe him.
And when he indicated that his socialized medicine plan
will prevent Medicare and Medicaid from sinking our government
deeper and deeper into debt, probably no one believed him.
Except, perhaps, some White House bears, including Hopey
and Changie.
