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Ask HN: Is CPI a joke? Health insurance costs dropped 37%?

5 points by jtbayly ↗ HN
I’m really asking a serious question, though I know it sounds sarcastic.

Is there any reason I should assume the CPI knows what it is talking about and that health insurance has dropped by more than a third in the last year?

Here is an article that mentions it: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/13/deflation-is-the-anti-inflation-heres-the-september-2023-breakdown.html

2 comments

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Mountain_Skies
Any inflation metric that excluses basics like food, housing and transportation costs is pretty worthless for the average person but might have some kind of value for academics and finance pros.
h2odragon
I like how the graph shows "-37% Health Insurance" but the figures aren't quoted in the text of the article.

> Electronics such as televisions, cell phones and computers continually get better. Consumers get more for roughly the same amount of money, which shows up as a price decline in the CPI data. Health insurance, which falls in the "services" side of the U.S. economy, is similar.

That's as close as they could get