Math:

[Warning: the following will be of interest to almost no one.]

Rich Lowry writes:

[Al] Franken says I make a “mistake” when I write of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (italics to highlight the point in contention), “The generous federal subsidy encouraged states to maximize their health benefits, essentially extending a federal entitlement to children living in families with incomes roughly 200 percent above the poverty line.” But this is absolutely correct. It is Franken who is mistaken, and apparently doesn’t have the slightest idea what he is writing about.

Such programs often apply to families with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line. It is a way to ensure that they reach the working poor. “200 percent of poverty” is, therefore, pretty standard public-policy argot, but Franken seems never to have heard of it, and insists that I’m wrong that SCHIP applies to families in that category. The error, however, is his: According to the American Medical Association, “SCHIP coverage is now available in 38 states and the District of Columbia for children up to age 19 whose family income is at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level.”

Franken also says the North Carolina SCHIP “was limited to children residing in families with income below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, not 200 percent above the poverty line.”

If true, this would mean that the program applied only to the poorest of the poor, leaving out many people who are below the poverty line. This is silly and incorrect, which Franken would know if he had even run a Google search. Check out this site, among others, to see that North Carolina provides help to children in families earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty-level income figure.

Let this be a warning to other comedians: Don’t try to do public policy.

I’m only going on Lowry’s characterization of the exchange; I haven’t read either of the original pieces. But if all is as Lowry describes it, Franken was [shudder] right, and Lowry remains wrong.

“200 percent above the poverty line” does not mean the same thing as “200 percent of the poverty line.” The latter means “twice the poverty line.” The former means “three times the poverty line.” (Compare: “100 percent of the poverty line” means the poverty line. “100 percent above the poverty line” means twice that.)

Moreover, “below 200 percent of the federal poverty level” does not mean “only to the poorest of the poor, leaving out many people who are below the poverty line” in any way that I can see. It means “Up to, but not including, the income level that is twice the federal poverty level.” If the federal poverty level is $10,000, it means incomes of up to $19,999.99 .

The AMA quote Lowry offers doesn’t make sense as it, and is likely a mistake. (It doesn’t bear out his own description of the program either– it makes it sound as though the program deliberately excludes the poor.) But the link he offers leads to the statement:

Title XXI of the Social Security Act, which established SCHIP, specifies that children living in families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for coverage under the program.

In other words, incomes up to (and including) twice the poverty line. That means Franken’s statement was off by a cent– the statute encompasses families with incomes below or at twice the poverty line, not just below it. (Using the imaginary numbers above: Up to $20,000, not up to $19,999.99.) But Lowry’s initial description is off by a full poverty-level-increment, i.e. $30,000 instead of $20,000.

In the rest of the (generally unedifying) Franken-Lowry exchange, Lowry clearly has the better of the argument. He comes across like a grown-up whose biggest mistake lay in trying to reason with a clown. (A clown who’s sometimes very funny, but a clown nonetheless.) Here, however, it seems to me that Lowry was the less careful of the two– that he was wrong the first time, and remains wrong in his attempt to have the last word now.

UPDATE: Lowry fesses up.

I did indeed misread Franken in the way described below–and did it in a very snotty way. I duly stand corrected. While we’re involved in counting issues, please count me as redfaced!