To Dream of Impossible Things

LOL - the fool who downrated the post has no clue what the NBER site is, has not read the paper, and will remain hopelessly mired in ignorance; can't be helped This is a link to the Oregon study for Joe, and anyone else interested in the topic: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17190

But it appears that people on Medicaid did better than people without insurance from the summary.

People on Medicaid do better than people without insurance.
People with insurance do better than people on Medicaid.

Hardly a surprising finding since most people on Medicaid are there because they can't afford needed health services. In fact the Oregon study may well show that people put on Medicaid prior to needing medical services may do as well as people with insurance.

That link to the NBER study was only posted to illustrate lack of selection bias in sampling - via lottery in the Oregon case - but recall you're still starting with a low income population, so the results of medical care are skewed by other factors. You'd need to have an entire population for conclusive results.

Statistics, as usual, are like the 3 blind men describing the Elephant.
In this case they fail to take account of the factors involved in human health.

People don't just get sick over night, many people on medicare have been sick all their lives. People who begin having health problems at a young age begin losing their capacity to hold the level of employment that will provide health insurance. Once a person begins to lose their capacity to maintain employment, the downhill slide begins, lack of steady work and routine has devastating consequences to one's health.

This is just one more example of someone, who has spent their life far behind the lines, trying to describe the situation at the front, using a map, a poor map at that.

You understand you go on Medicare at age 65. Rich, poor, healthy, lame, and sick. You may decline Medicare B, but A starts at age 65.

oops, sposed to say Medicaid

As Krugman's Op-Ed today confirms, Obama has now completely bought into the Republican storyline about the invisible bond vigilantes, the confidence fairy, and the fallacy that the government budget works like a family budget. (A fallacy he once rightly disparaged.) It's not as depressing as the human-rights picture. But it's depressing to see Obama turn into a tanned version of Joe Lieberman like that. Conservative Zombie ideas, repeatedly killed by evidence, are eating this supposedly-Democratic administration's brains!

(PS: I'm trying to find the Alice paragraph where she says, "what matters is who's right and who's wrong" and one of the queens replies, "what matters is who has the power". But I can't seem to find it. Am I imagining the passage?)

Sorry. I should have realized that without being prompted.

Brain fart on my part, kinda embarrassing.

Anyhow, with revision, I'm inclined to agree with you.

You're not imagining the passage - but it's not one of the queens:

Have to leave for Berlin early am and finish a report before they open - see you all next month

Well thanks Roger.
What worries me is that politicians go around spouting such nonsense.
I only see 2 reasons for that, ignorance or manipulation, either option isn't promising.

I'm going with manipulation. They want something that inspires agreement, approval, and above all, understanding by the lowest common denominator.

I'm inclined to agree, there are a lot of people, even educated, who entirely lack any critical thinking skills.
That said, it still seems a bit ignorant for a politician, in today's wired world, to think they won't get called out on this sort of thing. Although they may simply be playing the numbers game.

Good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So you are agreeing that the WSJ headline was garbage and perhaps typical of the impossible things that conservatives often seem to think?

I watched too much of the latest disney Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp. In that movie, I think it was the father who believed in six impossible things before breakfast, at the end, when Alice slew the Jabberwockey, she recited the six impossible things...(I could blame it on my eight year granddaughter, but I admit to watching it the first time by myself..) I have a couple of free classics of Alice in Wonderland on both Kindle and Kob0, maybe I'll force myself to read one of them..) My reading taste leaves something to be desired to put it mildly.

For a long time I have felt the republicans have managed to turn bizarro world (seinfeld) into a weird accepted reality.

True, we need to take the data as they are given. The statement in the headline, however, is a conclusion drawn from the statistics, not the statistics themselves. And that conclusion is not supported by the statistics.


You do realize that my initial post linked to an NPR story that was all about that study, don't you? But what am I saying? Of course you didn't know that. Otherwise you wouldn't have made such an ass of yourself by trying to point out to me something that I already knew.

Yes, that was the passage I was thinking of. Thanks!

You know what goes on... When you are denied the facts you know that what goes on demands your attention and action because our own liberty depends upon our having the truth with which to act, and because, no matter how hard we try we cannot deny moral responsibility for what is done, period, in our names or not, and we will be held responsible by those injured when the injury of the world is anathema to our democracy... We know what is done, but we are commanded by the same fear inflicted upon others that paralyzes, If, we are not among those counting the profits of injustice... Ignorance is a mask we wear to disguise from our selves our disgust and self hatred... Democracy demands courage and morality and as a society we have neither... So people wish on to others what they would not for a moment bear themselves.... But I think we cannot all possibly be Lutherens here... We cannot all draw the line between the inner and the outer man... We cannot all save our souls and at the same moment countenance tyranny as so many Germans did with Hitler...

It is the same as with this question: Since we know the social programs designed to palliate the worst aspects of capitalism were never designed for good, but to continue injustice without end, and now we see tyranny so complete by the rich that they will take off the kid gloves and reveal the mailed fist, and force us to watch people starve and die of disease in the streets while our public hospitals fold, knowing we have no choice, no ability to react, no moral ground upon which to stand since we have already sold so often the rights of others for coins... We are living the lie... Not one of us can afford to stand up and accuse another of bald faced lies in order to support tyranny... We have all been guilty of the same crime...