Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, has an op-ed bashing the ACA based on a linked report by Gorman Actuarial, LLC and Jonathan Gruber. (Which I found out from Bernstein.) There's a kind of amazing mistake in there, though, which I noticed even though most of the issues involved are kind of above my pay grade.
Here's Walker:
It’s important to go beyond these facts and understand what they really mean for those of us who live in the Badger State. Young people will be hit hard with premium increases. Those between 19 and 29 years old who have individual insurance will experience an average premium increase of $1,631 per year. A family of four that does not qualify for a subsidy can expect a 28 percentincrease — from $8,528 to $10,912. For those who are covered by the small-employer group market, the average premium increase will be 15 percent.
First of all, according to this report, the individual insurance market only serves about 180,000 people in the state--meanwhile, 340,000 people are projected to become insured. Assuming the report is right, which Walker seems to.
Second--and this is the best part--the number "1,631" only appears once in the report. Here is the table, on which I have drawn in red pen:
Under "Total Before Reform" for 19-29 year-olds in the individual market. Not the increase! The current amount. The "Total After Reform", it says, is $2,178.
That's an increase of $547--not, you know, doubling.
Oh, and the title of this section ends with "Before Implementation of Tax Subsidy".
And I must be reading it right, because the next line--about the family of four--reads the next table on that same page correctly!
Also, as Bernstein says about that "15 percent increase" part:
That’s highly misleading. In fact, what the study says that 53 percent of those in that group market will have that 15 percent increase, while the other 47 percent will average a 16 percent decrease.
And again--the Small Group Market, according to this report, only has 330,000 people, compared to the 340,000 who'll be getting covered.
Assuming the report is right, which Walker does.
See Bernstein for some issues with some of the rest of how Walker uses this report--which, as Bernstein says, Walker links to!
Am I missing something? I'd hate to be making my own stupid mistake, but it seems pretty incontrovertible to me.
9:42 PM PT: By the way, I don't know anything about how reliable the report's numbers themselves might or might not be. Above my pay grade, as I said. But I don't like seeing numbers used either sloppily or cynically.