NYTimes scapegoats ACA subsidies

Katie Thomas, Reed Abelson and Jo Craven McGinty have an article in today's NYTimes on how the new Affordable Care Act is leaving some middle-class families "caught in the uncomfortable middle." By this they mean that those with incomes just above the cut-offs for subsidies are paying much more than they would if their incomes were just a little less. Unfortunately the math doesn't quite work out on this.
The calculation that matters is how much money a family has left after they pay for their insurance. Look at the families the article gives the numbers for (I'll assume the numbers in the article are correct):

Family	Actual Income	Premiums	Net Income	Lower Income	Lower Premiums	Lower Net Income	Savings
NH	$100,000	$12,000	$88,000	$94,200	$6,000	$88,200	$200
Polk Cty.	$50,000	$9,801	$40,199	$45,000	$2,228	$42,772	$2,573
OKC	$50,000	$3,279	$46,721	$45,000	$2,425	$42,575	($4,246)

So in two out of three cases the Times describes, the families either have more income after insurance (OKC), or effectively the same amount (NH) that they would have if they made the lower incomes described in the article (ignoring the effects of income tax). At least one of the other families is likely in a similar position (the Montana bakery owners, who would pay $1,500 more a year if their income rose by some unknown amount, which is likely more than $1,500). Most families will have more net income if they make the higher income, even with the higher premiums. In other words, the subsidies are doing what they're supposed to, making the insurance more affordable for those with lower incomes. That they're not helping families who don't qualify for them seems beside the point.
What the article is really about is how for some people ACA insurance will cost more than they currently pay, and it mixes in this mostly inaccurate attack on the subsidies. But even here the article falls down because it doesn't compare all the old and new health-care costs of the families. Premiums are only one part of those expenses: there are co-pays for office visits, medicines to purchase, and so on. Granted, it's not easy to calculate that. You'd need a lot more data than are presented in this article, but that's why this health issuance stuff is hard.
Who's spending more or less on health care because of the ACA? We know as little at the end of the article as we do at the beginning.

Paywall? What paywall?

Finally hit the NYTimes 20-article limit this evening. In place of the URL of the page I was visiting, up came another URL, suspiciously like the first, but with "?gwh=" and a string of 32 (who'd have guessed?) alphanumeric characters. Then the very pretty alert box comes up, blocking the page, and telling me that I've hit the magic number.
"Gee," I wonder, "what would happen if I just deleted that whole last bit from the question mark on?"
What happens is that the page I wanted just comes back, without the warning.
1. Why bother? Are people that bad at using their browsers that this would be effective?
2. Why pay $40M for this?

Oh, and if you're quick, you can hit command-. to cancel the page load before it hits the warning, but after the content you want to read as loaded.

The NYTimes up-coming paywall

I don't quite get their plan on this (which makes me think it's about as well thought out as their other ventures and attitudes on the intertubes).

First, at no cost everybody gets to read 20 articles a month, and also to browse the "home page, section fronts, blog fronts and classifieds," and read the Top News section on the Apps. I'm going to guess that this is going to be enough for a lot of people: "What are the headlines today? Ooh, let me read about this breaking story. OK, I'm done now." BTW, since section fronts sometimes include Top News stories, I assume links to these will be free wherever you click on them. For example, right now the top three stories on the World section front are the top three stories on the iPad Top News section. (Truth be told, I assume they'll goof this up and the links won't always be free if you don't click on them in the right place.)

Second they're charging extra to have access for both an iPhone and an iPad app. Huh?

Third, if you come to one of their articles via a search engine, blog or other social media link, that article will count against your 20 if you haven't hit it yet, but you will also still be able to read it if you have already hit 20. Search hits will have a 5-a-day limit. How is this not a giant hole in their plans? The truly devious could simply enter the title they want to read into their browser's search bar, and then click on the subsequent link in the search engine. A little more work, but not much. Or they could put the link into their own tweets or FaceBook or blog.

And I assume they're keeping track of this via cookies, which is another hole: a decent cookie manager can let a user easily switch identities and circumvent the monthly limit with ease.

The NYTimes should know better than anyone how its users reach their articles, so maybe they've got this sussed out. I just can't help thinking that they don't.

On a side note, I also don't get why their bloggers keep their blogs at NYTimes.com. Krugman and Silver and the others could likely do what Frank Rich is doing and not lose much readership. Since they don't seem to get paid anyway, what does it matter to them? If their readership does drop after the paywall goes up, will they stay?

(Gruber's had a few posts on this. Here's one.)

Edited to add (21 March): That didn't take long: Twitter feed of all NYT articles is now up and running.