Macro Madness
By: Kevin Grant
Tags: Politics, Insurance, Health, Social Media, Medicine

Willy Wonka and the Physicians for a National Healthcare Program

Here’s why you shouldn’t let your politics be influenced by image macros on social media.

A few days ago I saw the above image macro on Facebook. It seems to be associated with a group called “Physicians for a National Health Program”, which lobbies for socialized medicine in America. It was followed by this text:

“If private health insurers are “losing money” thanks to the Affordable Care Act, then how have Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana, and UnitedHealth posted profits in excess of $65 billion since the law took effect?”

Let’s see if we can answer their question. Here’s why the macro fails to make the case that the above-mentioned profits are evidence that Obamacare is successful:

1. The macro doesn’t provide a source for the number, so we have no way to gain a reliable understanding about how it was derived, what it was measuring, or if it’s valid.

2. The macro’s makers claim to have summed the profits over an unknown number of years “since 2010”. This means nothing because we don’t know when the macro was made, or if the sum includes profits from 2010, or includes prorated profits for part of the year in which it was made.

3. By summing profits over so many years, the resulting totals are made much larger, resulting in an undeserved “wow!” effect. This is a cheap form of emotional manipulation using statistics. Instead, yearly profit figures, or a yearly average, should be given for each company. Also included should be yearly revenues, number of plans, and any other data which would put the profits into a realistic perspective.

4. The description beneath the macro implies that profits from several companies were summed, but we don’t know if the list of companies given is complete, or accurate.

5. The companies listed beneath the macro do many things other than provide health insurance, and provide many types of health insurance other than Obamacare plans. Given the contents of the text in the macro, the relevant consideration isn’t whether or not the companies are profitable overall, but whether or not they’re making or losing money specifically on Obamacare plans.

Here’s a link to a news article about this issue. Assuming that the article is correct, note that Aetna and UnitedHealth Group both reported losses specifically on their Obamacare plans in 2015. Anthem reports breaking even, and hopes for profits in 2016. At the time of the article (Feb 2016) Humana was expected to report losses for 2015, I haven’t checked to see if they did.

So it seems that the health insurance companies haven’t been lying about their losses. It does appear, however, as if Physicians for a National Health Program has been using misleading macros in order to further their political agenda. Or at least that they don’t do their homework before making and distributing said macros.

Warning: If you had a positive emotional reaction to the image macro before reading this article, then you may already have been infected with a cognitive virus that could adversely affect your political behavior. In that case, I prescribe two books on statistics and a followup visit to my Medium publication in three weeks.