Flashback – (Mis)understanding Insurance

If they learn economics in journalism school, they must quickly forget everything upon graduation. Furthermore, when the facts don't make a compelling story, they resort to the usual tactic of trying to make stories fit their worldview or make things look scarier than they are. Here is a prime example I gave in December 2016.

[As I was reading the transcript of Scott Pelley’s "60 Minutes" interview with House Speaker Paul Ryan, I noticed that he seemed uninterested in hard news or in-depth information so much as he was interested in tripping up the Speaker, trying to put him in a position of disagreeing with his new boss, making one or the other of them look bad, or uncovering something potentially embarrassing.

He asked how often the two speak on the phone and who initiates the conversation. The answers were almost daily and both. No news there. How does he answer the phone? “He doesn’t say, ‘This is the president-elect?’” No. “Have you told him being president is not being CEO of the United States, that the Congress is going to have a say?” 

Instead of asking how the two got together after a contentious election, he asked, “Who apologized to whom?” It’s clear by now that Pelley has no liking or respect for Donald Trump, thinks he is a bully and a racist, and is searching for evidence to back up his views. Better yet, he would like to get Ryan to agree on any point that might make it seem he is of the same opinion.

The silliness and self-serving finally comes to a close, and Pelley asks a number of questions about policy issues. Soon he gets to the details about possible changes to Obamacare and the sniping continues. At one point Pelley says “And women will pay the same as men? That didn’t used to be the case.” This is a question designed to get an answer that will incite outrage. He is trying to get some admission of Republican bias against women, but showing in the process that he does not understand how insurance works and counting on the fact that many Americans don’t either.

Insurance usually works by assessing the risk and charging premiums accordingly. If you have homeowner’s insurance you expect a discount for having a working alarm system. Teen drivers are generally less safe than more experienced drivers, but boys have more accidents than girls. Auto insurance for a young man 16-25 is higher. There is no outrage there. It’s not unusual for companies to charge smokers more for their health insurance benefits. Owners of cars with higher repair costs pay higher premiums. Older cars are cheaper to insure due to the lower replacement cost. Those who don’t drive as many miles sometimes pay lower premiums. Costs of auto and homeowners insurance vary by what part of the country and by the size of the town or city you live in. And since women outlive men and take fewer chances, they pay less for life insurance. Older people pay more, as do those who participate in dangerous hobbies like skydiving or juggling chainsaws.

This all happens without a stir. Everyone seems to understand that certain classes of people are at a higher risk for either the frequency or the size of insurance claims. Hence they should pay more. The ones in the classes with higher premiums don’t like it, but they pay. So why would people be upset that some women, especially those of childbearing age, might have to pay more? That “used to be the case” and it didn’t have anything to do with prejudice or victimization.

Apparently the government and some group of citizens have now decided that charging women more for health insurance can be explained only by prejudice. Everyone must purchase the same insurance for the same cost or there will be an uproar. And Scott Pelley and others in his profession are more than happy to incite and later fan the flames of that uproar, because it makes their job of reporting the news so much easier. Their job is not to inform or to educate; their job is to attract views and clicks. Nothing does that better than a good demonstration or protest, even those grounded in fundamental misunderstanding.]

P.S. I have often said that problems with healthcare costs must be solved on the basis of costs, not by tinkering with health insurance, but that’s for another discussion.

More Idiocy From the Media

Not wanting to break the spirit of Flashback Fridays, I refer to “Why Aren’t We Insulted?” from just a few weeks ago, but this is really a slightly different subject.

On March 1 I wrote, “When companies and politicians treat us like compete idiots or pander to us by latching on to the latest trends, I think we should be insulted. We are being manipulated, but continue to respond predictably.” Equally insulting is a new trend in reporting on the coronavirus. The media treats us like fools and idiots without any pushback from readers and viewers.

I’ve heard it many times on local TV news as well as national network news, and I see it in print: “The death toll from coronavirus continues to rise.” Here are just a few quick examples from CBS, US News and the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Think about this for a minute. The death toll from anything is always going to rise unless there are zero deaths. The latest death toll, the one they refer to and display on the screen, is calculated by adding new deaths to the ones already reported. If there is only one more death, the toll goes up. And unless someone miraculously rises from the dead it will never decrease! In the middle of a pandemic, few additional deaths would be cause for some optimism. But optimistic news takes a back seat, and breathlessly reporting of “continuing to rise” is more frightening and better serves their purpose of keeping everyone in a panic, tuning in and anticipating their next breaking-news bombshell.

As critical thinkers, we should be insulted by such misleading headlines, but apparently we are not. We get the news that they want to serve up in the format they want to use and with built in bias. Journalism is, for the most part, dead. We get the news we respond to (or at least tolerate). We get the news we deserve.

They keep advertising "We are all in this together," but imagine the shock and surprise if just one reporter at the daily press conference asked the simple question, "What can we do to help?"

Power of the Behavioral Model

I have mentioned before how correctly using the behavioral model eliminates the kind of name-calling and attribution of negative motives that are so common. Using the model requires a little skill and practice, but mostly paying attention.

It’s based on the old adage of punish the behavior and not the child. Good parents don’t call their children bad; they ask for better behavior.

As an easy example, take the spouse (or teen) coming home later than expected. The other party is waiting up, feeling worried and upset, ready to pounce when the door opens. “You promised to be home by X! Don’t you care about my feelings? You are so inconsiderate! You don’t care about me (or your family)!” And on it goes. The other person gets defensive, possibly angry, especially if there is a good explanation – some accident or emergency.

The behavior is coming home late. Both can agree. Even if there is not a good reason, there may still be a solution that both can agree on without antagonistic remarks. But in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to discuss only behavior without affixing blame and bad intentions.

This is hard even for journalists who we expect to be objective. This Atlantic article published a few days after the Lincoln Memorial incident is instructive. By then several videos had become available showing different sides of the story, but people still couldn’t stick to the facts – they couldn’t report the behavior without assigning motives.

In the original picture, a student, “wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, smiles before an Omaha tribal elder, a confrontation viewers took as an act of aggression by a group of white youths against an indigenous community – and by extension, people of color more broadly.” The behavior was standing, wearing a certain hat and smiling. It was automatically racist. He didn’t just hate the individual; he hated all Native Americans as well as every other minority. The smile was called a smirk, when it could have meant he felt nervous having an adult in his personal space beating on a drum.

Later video showed that the tribal elder moved toward the student (not the other way around). Which was the act of aggression? Possibly neither. We don’t know what they were thinking. Neither said anything to indicate what they were thinking, but observers on both sides were sure they knew. The tribal elder later said it felt hostile “and caused him and his companions to fear for their safety.” In that case why did he move forward? What behavior gave him that impression? Follow-up questions are called for.

The explosion of emotion led to condemnation on social media of the student, and by extension, other students at his school, the school itself and even Catholic education! No behavior to support any of this – but let’s throw in some death threats.

The story was much more complex, but most people made up their minds and moved on. The article even says about the students, “their actual intentions and motivations seem vital to any account of what took place. But not only can we never really know what those were, they also don’t matter once the original video has been shot and shared.”

Had this happened only 15 years ago, the incident would have gone unnoticed except for the people involved. Those heckling the students would have felt satisfied that they stood up for their beliefs. The students would have gone home with a story of an unexpected confrontation with a tribal elder. He, in turn, may have felt proud of his role.

But thanks to new technology, national news got to broadcast erroneous first impressions. Even with new evidence, the New York Times tried to soften their original take by reporting a revised opinion “that an explosive convergence of race, religion and ideological beliefs – against a national backdrop of political tension – set the stage for the viral moment.” Of course uninvolved citizens across the country got to express outrage for or against the student(s) complete with name-calling and insults. It’s mob mentality carried out on smart phones.

It’s easy to look at behavior and jump to conclusions. It’s also gratifying, if we can uncover a conclusion that satisfies our own preconceived prejudices. The article itself even calls a MAGA hat “an almost perfect avatar for apparent white nationalism.” It’s a sad state when a hat can set off such an emotional firestorm! Behavior like this does not lead to a happy ending, and it's time we all stopped jumping to a favored conclusion and blaming the other side long enough to figure that out.

Everyone Claims to Be a Victim

I read the transcript of a podcast: “Is the media making American politics worse?” It comes from a political journalist who believes all of his colleagues are honorable and hardworking, but “I’m worried we’re failing. I’m worried we’re making American politics worse, not better.” To get a more objective viewpoint he invites a professor of journalism to discuss it with him. The exchange goes as follows.

The crisis is “because everything around us has changed — our business models, the way people read us, the way we compete with each other, the way we’re manipulated — and we’re not keeping up. Instead, we’re getting played by the outrage merchants and con artists and trolls and polarizers who understand this new world better.” Apparently this crisis of trust is not of their own making. It’s someone else’s fault, the trolls and polarizers.

“We’re being used to fracture American democracy, and I don’t think we know how to stop it.”

His guest believes the president is forcing journalists to cover his “nuts” rallies. The host complains that the media run in packs, so if you get a story wrong it has no consequences, because everyone else got it wrong too. They just move on to the next story without any investigation of their own missteps or any feeling of responsibility to make corrections.

They are concerned that the outrageous elbows out the important in news coverage.

Both admit the media is now in the entertainment business which is different from journalism and that “We don’t really have a press corps that takes responsibility for the priority list that it ends up working from. We have journalists who are just reacting to events.”

So we have journalists admitting that when stories come in, it’s their organizations that decide what is news and what is not (the priority list). Despite that, they don’t want to admit any bias. They want to be seen as arbiters of right and wrong, of truth and lies, but this printed exchange of ideas reeks of political bias. More evidence comes out as they comment on their audience: “So on the one hand, we become more important to the people who feel like they are on our side. And we have become less important to the ones who aren’t.” They then go on to agree that those who disagree with them – not on their side – are wrong and that’s what keeps them from doing their jobs.

See how easily they portray themselves as victims. What they write and what they choose to report is out of their control; and there is nothing they can do about it.

Part of this is a responsibility issue with the reporters, and part is a perspective issue with the audience. The media must deal with a crisis of trust and a built-in conflict between the entertainment and journalism sides of the business. But none of it is their fault. The audience is driving them to water down the important with the “new, outrageous, conflict-oriented, secret, interesting” stories that the outrage merchants force them to cover. As for their audience, our lack of perspective, our yearning for the new and outrageous, results in us getting the news we deserve rather than important and meaningful stories. Meanwhile, these journalists portray themselves as victims of the system.

The bottom line is that we can’t expect anyone to watch out for us. The truth is out there somewhere, but to find it we must question everything! The future lies in critical thinking and perspective, with a little responsibility on the side.