The Associated Press just released a story with the headline, “Millions in insurance rebates coming to Carolinas.” The story talks about 2013 health insurance premiums that are considered overcharges, based on provisions of The Affordable Care Act. But the writing of the story is rather flawed. The writer calculates “an average refund of $92 per family” in South Carolina, by dividing the total amount being refunded by the total number of consumers that will get a refund. This glosses over the fact that only 387,000 consumers (out of a total population of over 14 million) in North and South Carolina will be getting any kind of refund this year.
But I am burying the lead, as they say. The real point of this post is the headline itself. Most news outlets that published this story online ran the following headline (which was no doubt supplied by The Associated Press):
Millions in insurance rebates coming to Carolinas
WXII in Winston-Salem thought we should know more about the insurance:
Millions in health insurance rebates coming to Carolinas
Time-Warner Cable of Charlotte added capital letters and units of measurement:
Millions of Dollars in Insurance Rebates Coming to Carolinas
But our Asheville Citizen-Times decided to change the very facts of the story:
Health insurance rebates coming to millions in Carolinas
Which isn’t true. Some people in this little town have too much time on their hands. I won’t say who.
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Update: An hour or so after I posted a comment on The Citizen-Times pointing out the misleading headline, the newspaper (to its credit) changed the headline to:
Health insurance rebates coming to consumers in Carolinas
To some consumers, yes.
I seriously object to being referred to in the current parlance as a “consumer”. I’m a person, a human, I might be a citizen (used to be a subject). Defining me as a consumer reveals an attitude that we only exist to consume the stuff other people (consumers too?) want to foist on us.
As a consumer, perhaps I could be automated, replaced by a programme purchasing the items Amazon chooses for me. No need for them ever to be seen, used, or even delivered. I’m dispensable.
Oh, and a cultural issue: I guess you wanted a hash sign in your security quiz. I nearly put a £. Silly me!
Guy, I agree with you on both counts. (1) I used the word “consumer” in this post because that is the term used in the article. I could not tell from context whether the writer meant “individual” or “family” or “household” — my guess is that it means “subscriber” which in light of your objection is hardly better than “consumer”. Yes, I too dislike being called a “consumer” although when I do consume I try to do so non-wastefully. I especially dislike being “consumed” myself! And (2) I chose “pound sign” because it was indeed something that an Eastern European spammer would not know — and it is commonly used to terminate number entries in US telephone voice-response systems (another impersonal way of dealing with “consumers!”) — I misstepped and will change the symbol to something like “asterisk”. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Your blog is great, but I was having some trouble subscribing, so I’m going to tell you these posts are great and click the “Notify Me of New Posts by Email” button. Keep up the good work and I promise I’ll check the spam folder for your updates. (You’d be surprised how many other blog posts get treated the same way.)