HERE WE GO AGAIN. According to certain of the Liberal Media, if Americans spend more on health care in a given year than they did the year before, but not as much more as usual, then they actually spent less.

I kid you not.

A page one headline in the Fresno Bee this morning read, "Nation spends less on health." The same story was carried in various other papers around the country under the headline, "Americans spend less on health care."

But the story, which was from the New York Times and was originally (and, to the Times' credit, appropriately) entitled "Health spending held down by recession," doesn't say health care spending is down.  It says that the rate of growth is down, and that the recession is to blame.

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Health care spending in 2010 grew at only a "slight" 3.9 percent over the prior year, the story lamented, citing a report published in the journal Health Affairs. This "reflected the 'extraordinary' slow growth in consumption of medical services and products, said … one of the government economists who wrote the study." And to quite a few editors in the Liberal Press, that's the same as spending less.

Try this simple third-grade-math story problem. If Jill spends 10 cents for jelly beans on Monday, and she spends 20 cents for jelly beans on Tuesday, and she spends 22 cents for Jelly beans on Wednesday, did Jill spend more for jelly beans on Wednesday than she did on Tuesday, or did she spend less?

Seems obvious. But apparently there are a lot of newspaper editors and headline writers around the country who were taught a different brand of math in J-school.

Just one other point. The New York Times article also said that the recession "lasted from December 2007 to June 2009." Does that assertion jibe with anyone's real-life experience? I doubt it. — Perspicaciously Yours, Rand Green, Editor/Publisher, PerspicacityPress.com.

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