Slippery Statistics

Kent already pointed out some goofy language in Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, but some of it is downright misleading. Let’s all flip to page 7 of our PDFs and follow along:

The average family premium for employer-based coverage (including employer and employee contributions) is over $12,000. For half of Americans, this total premium accounts for at least one-fourth of their annual income.

Sure sounds bad, doesn’t it? At first read, it seems as if there are any number of families out there shelling out $12,000 a year for their premiums, and with our national median income at about $48,000 a year, that’s a pretty significant chunk of change.  Problem is, most of those families are contributing very little to their total premium.  According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, most individuals with employer-sponsored health care pay only about 16% of the total premium (families pay about 28%).  In other words, instead of spending $12,000, or 25% of their total yearly income, they’re paying about $2040, or just over 4% of a $48k median income.  Doesn’t sound quite so terrible now, does it?