White House and MSM Economic Illiteracy

When I saw the headline this morning, Obama Says Health Law Shouldn’t Be Excuse to Raise Rates in the New York Times, I knew it would demonstrate the economic illiteracy of the President and the reporters.  I was hoping that someone who is good with numbers would Fisk the article.  M_O_M obliged:

The NY Times Is Lucky The Spider Bit Me

Because if the spider hadn't bitten me, I'd have enough energy to really eviscerate this paper that should adopt the motto "All The Pez That's Fit To Print". Just look at this idiocy.

The White House is concerned that health insurers will blame the new law for increases in premiums that are intended to maximize profits rather than covering claims. The administration is also closely watching investigations by a number of states into the actuarial soundness of double-digit rate increases.

They gargle on with this nonsense, which surely came straight from the White House:

The new law requires the health secretary to work with states to establish a process for annual reviews of “unreasonable increases in premiums.” Administration officials said Monday that they were still writing regulations to define “unreasonable increases.”

So the article then proceeds to discuss state crackdowns on insurance increases:

In Massachusetts, the administration of Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, used long-untapped power to deny 9 of 10 rate increases requested by the state’s insurers, provoking a lawsuit from the industry. A court in Maine recently upheld a smaller rate increase for that state’s largest insurer — 10.9 percent instead of 18.1 percent — that had been ordered by the insurance superintendent.

See, this is just out and out misrepresentation. A google would have shown the hapless Sack and Stolberg that the Massachusetts situation is rather obviously political. The court in MA told the insurers to wait for the departmental grievance process to work, even though the MA law explicitly says insurers can't set rates. Everyone knows that the insurance companies will be granted major increases after the elections are over, because, lalala, they are losing money:

Read the whole thing; I'll take an impaired, snake bitten M_O_M any time over the New York Times.

This afternoon I had a discussion with Oldest Son who insisted that putting private insurers out of business was an unintended consequence of the healthcare bill.  He didn't think the Administration or Congress was smart enough to have planned this.  I disagreed; I think bankrupting insurance companies and forcing them out of business as a way to achieve government run healthcare was clearly intentional, albeit covert.  In the end, incompetence and/or malice are leading to the same place.