It Is Disgusting When the HIGHLY Educated Ignore Their Academics
This from Twitter, on May 31, 2018:
A5 #AHCA’s plan to push older women off insurance: 1) charge women 55-64 up to 5x more 2) offer less coverage for more $ #ProtectOurCare
— Dr. Raegan (@DrRaegan) May 31, 2017
If possible, this is WORSE than the AARP’s statement of “No Age Tax.” Much worse. Why?
Let’s take a look at this person’s academic background: IMPECCABLE. This is as good as it gets in the United States.
- University of North Carolina
- University of Pennsylvania Medical School
- Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
The Chance That Dr Raegan Does NOT Understand This Math…
is EXACTLY ZERO, NADA, ZILCH. To many, math is intimidating, mysterious. To others, like people with Dr Raegan’s background? NO WAY. It is a 100% guarantee that she has not only studied math (statistics) to a level that she can understand this, she has EXCELLED AT IT. D is for Diploma, but you don’t get into those schools in the first place if you’ve received one. We don’t need to see a transcript, the identity of the schools themselves prove the point.
The math of calculating the price of a financial contract, when the outcome is not known in advance, when the outcome can vary wildly after the fact, is known, and accepted, and if you had published this model, you have won the Nobel Prize in Finance. That said, this math is child’s play to Dr. Raegan.
It is difficult enough for me to explain to everyday people that health insurance is a financial contract, and the price of that contract is specifically a calculated matter. All of the stuff you read about (pre-existing conditions, pregnancy services, psychological counseling coverage, etc) affect the CALCULATION because the cost of insurance is dependent upon the cost of healthcare services received. There are zero exceptions to this. Guess what. Older Americans INCUR healthcare costs which are approximately 5x of younger adults. That is not taking into account the letter “v” in the model. When you get older, the variability of the outcomes is larger, not smaller, which means the cost of the financial contract is higher, not lower. That financial contract? Health insurance.
What is even worse? It is MUCH worse when those that have the academic background to fully understand the rationale and the mathematics behind that rationale….and totally discard it, as she has in this tweet.
What Are The Motivations?
We can never know exactly, but let’s take a guess about why the comment in public like this.
- Personal opinion (great, she discarded her academics in favor of personal bias. So the #AHCA plan is to push women only? What about the men?)
- She thought that readers would blindly accept her credentials, and accept her statements blindly
- She thought that the informed and strictly qualified (like me) weren’t paying attention to the obvious inconsistency of her statements
None of these works as a defense.
It gets worse, because many of the objections to the AHCA are indeed fact-based. It is a $800B cut in government spending that was earmarked for Medicaid, someone is going to lose coverage. We do not need a set of academic degrees or a CBO score to know this.
Now, however, with this tweet, everyday people are hit by statements made by highly-educated people, who intentionally combine facts with academic fallacy. This person cannot possibly hide behind the statement of “I don’t get it.” THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. When the smartest people in the nation do this, you can understand the statement made in the Maximize Your Medicare Newsletter here long ago: War Over the ACA is Inevitable (link).
If You Think I Am A Hater, Think Again
- Ann Arbor and Hyde Park Educated (I am not against the highly-educated)
- Child of Physician’s Household (I am not anti-physician)
- Older brother of two highly-educated (Ph.D, MBA), very successful younger sisters (this has nothing to do with gender)
