If it sounds too good to be true

How Health News Florida flubbed the rate story last week and what all reporters can take away from it

Remember those seven tips I offered earlier this month for how to report on health insurance rate proposals? I have a couple of additionsin light of some unfortunate misreporting last week in Florida that was amplified via Twitter.

On June 24three days before Floridas rate filing deadlinethe site Health News Florida (a regional health reporting organization designed to fill the lack of health news by more traditional outlets) published a story headlined, No rate increase? Can it be? The story, by Carol Gentry, began this way:

No insurance companyincluding heavyweights like Florida Blue and United Healthcarewants to raise premiums in Florida at all? Not even a smidge? Gentry herself seemed slightly unsure, as the caveats in the headline and lede showed. So, where did Gentry get this information? Floridas Office of Insurance Regulation, where companies must file rate requests, has put the requests online, Gentry wrote. Gentry looked on the website and saw zeros listed as proposed increases (or, in some cases, saw decreases listed). No increases! Consumer advocates, Gentry wrote, are cautiously optimistic that this is evidence that the Affordable Care Act is restraining prices for individuals who dont get coverage through a group.

The Hill picked up Gentrys report and, in its own June 24 piece, called it a blow to critics of Obamacare who predicted substantially higher premiums. Both Gentrys piece and The Hills report (and the implicit or explicit Obamacare is working! takeaway) made the rounds on Twitter, including tweets or retweets by reporters from Kaiser Health News, ProPublica, HuffPost, The New Republic, and The Washington Post.

There were some skeptics on Twitter that day. No premium increases, of any size, for any plan in any region of the entire state of Florida? Seems *too* low, tweeted National Journal reporter Sam Baker. And, in a follow-up tweet: Wouldnt that mean every insurer in every county over-priced (kinda significantly) for this year?

Kaiser Family Foundations Larry Levitt weighed in to say that the zeros Gentry saw on the OIR website may not actually mean 0% rate change, they may be because data is proprietary. Levitt added that he was holding off judgement until I can review rate filings in more detail. Their search tool is currently down for maintenance.

When the OIR search tool came back online later that day, it came with this disclaimer: Displayed rate changes may not fully reflect increases and decreases due to claims of trade secret.

Turns out, skepticism was in order.

It was too good to be true, Health News Florida tweeted at 6pm that day, linking to Gentrys walk-back story in which she wrote:

Read more from the original source:
If it sounds too good to be true