Wow, that's a big shiny gift on the front page of the Journal Sentinel: "Families here get health deals. But single workers in Milwaukee area pay top dollar."
And a partridge in a pear tree! What a bold counterintuitive story for all those stories about the high cost of health care in southeastern Wisconsin! You suddenly realize you (provided you have family coverage of course) are better off than you thought. And you should be grateful for what you have rather than griping so much everytime you get a doctor bill.
But then you see the tag: By Guy Boulton. That'd be the same Guy Boulton who famously said there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Jim Doyle and Mark Green during the gubernatorial race.
And sure enough, you read this paragraph and you start to notice the metaphorical rips in the wrapping paper and stray pieces of tape sticking to your fingers:
Families in the Milwaukee area may be getting a bargain on the cost of health benefits, at least compared with their co-workers, despite the overall higher cost of health care here.
Information released last week by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that the average employer's premium for family coverage here is lower than the national average, and lower than the average in more than 30 other metro areas.
The survey's findings conflict with study after study showing that health insurance premiums and health care costs are higher in southeast Wisconsin.
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The survey found that the average total premium for family coverage in 2004 - the most recent year for which data is available - for the area that includes Milwaukee, Waukesha and West Allis was $9,853.
That figure - accurate to within an estimated 4.6% - is lower than the national average of $10,006. It is even below the state average of $10,146. And it is lower than the average in such cities as Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City.
No statistic lies more than an average, so the relevance of this finding is dubious at best. Moreover, without knowing the composition of the sample group it's even more difficult to say what that number means.
But still, it's a big box and what's rumbling around inside sounds promising. So you tear it open and after sifting through a ridiculous amount of tissue paper you find this lump of coal:
The cost of family coverage - or at least the way private employers calculate it - may be lower here than in other cities. But that's just one part of overall costs.
In contrast, the cost of providing health benefits for one employee here tops nearly every city in the country. The survey put that annual cost at $4,274. That's 15% higher than the national average of $3,705.
Health insurance premiums for one employee were higher only in Manchester/Nashua, N.H., and Providence, R.I., according to the federal survey.
And this one:
Also, the bargain for family coverage isn't the same deal when taking into account what an employee pays for his or her share of the cost of family coverage.
The survey found that employees pay an average of $2,637 for family coverage in the Milwaukee area, about 8% above the national average of $2,438.
The Brawler agrees: when an employee pays $189 more for coverage than the national average -- Boulton's yardstick -- "the bargain for family coverage isn't the same deal." Indeed, the Brawler wonders why Boulton didn't lead with the fact that Milwaukeeans pay 8% more than the national average for family coverage.
What's the good news in this story, again?
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