Nate Silver: debating the kill-billers has become...like debating the global warming denialists

[SpartanDem]

Another Left-Right Convergence
by Nate Silver @ 2:03 PM

I'm sorry, but debating the kill-billers on the policy merits of their position has become a bit like debating the global warming denialists. The denalists operate by picking and choosing which evidence they cite and what arguments they respond to. Sometimes, they raise fairly good points or expose legitimately sloppy work on behalf of "consensus" scientists. Sometimes, they are being contrarian for contrarianism's sake. And sometimes, they're just throwing a bunch of sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, hoping that the underlying truth or lack thereof is lost in the fog of debate.

A case in point is Jon Walker at Firedoglake, who today has a post claiming that removing the individual mandate would "reduce" the CBO score. I place "reduce" in square quotes because "reduce" is not the antonym of worsen, which is what I had argued the removal of the mandate would do to the CBO's scoring of the bill. The CBO is scoring the health care bills along a number of different dimensions, the four most important of which are outlays, revenues, coverage, and impact upon premium costs. The way that analysts and policymakers will react to the score is based on a combination of all four variables. If a bill slightly reduces the government's outlays but substantially reduces the number of uninsured people who would be covered, is its CBO score better? If the bill reduces outlays but also reduces revenues, would that improve its score?

In any event, Walker's claim is questionable on its face. The evidence he cites is from a Paul Krugman column, which I will quote from at some length now:

M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

That doesn’t look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.
This evidence is supposed to support Walker's side of the argument? It says that a bill without an individual mandate costs about 80 percent more per newly insured person. Perhaps, if fewer persons signed up for insurance, the aggregate cost to the government would be lesser. Or perhaps not: as Jon notes, the individual subsidies are structured such that the cost to the taxpayer is roughly fixed, with the government making up the difference in the event of higher premiums. So you'd have to weigh a higher cost per policyholder against fewer policyholders. My impression, precisely because of the way that the individual subsidies are actually structured (as opposed to Gruber's example of Obama's campaign trail plan), is that the "higher cost per policyholder" side would win out, and swamp the "savings" from leaving more people uninsured

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/another-left-right-convergence.html

[Larkspur]

1. Debating the pro-mandate crowd is like debating the pro-invade-Iraq crowd

Two can play at that game, Nate.

[vaberella]

13. You act like mandates is the end all/be all of this bill.

It is not. And there is a lot of good this bill does in the short to long run. This bill is not perfect but there is NEVER going to be a bill perfect even if it was single payer...

[roguevalley]

15. people say there is good in the bill. please list it. I would like to know

what that is. Thanks. It would help a lot.

[SpartanDem]

25. I would point you to this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x80261

[roguevalley]

57. thank you.

[BlooInBloo]

40. ...

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/health-reform-will-save-families-money.php

[jeanpalmer]

44. Where are the people on your graph

who don't have insurance and don't want it, and pay for their own health care costs. And pay very little or nothing in health care expenses because they are relatively healthy. There are millions of them. And "reform" will jack up their "out of pocket" costs by thousands of dollars. Where are they on your graph?

I know many people, especially young people, who are uninsured, have few health problems, see a doctor once a year, and pay perhap $75 a year out of pocket for health care. They don't want high priced insurance, and they don't need it. Imposing a $3000, $4000 or $5000 mandate on them will really hurt them financially. Why don't you mention them? Silvers and the other cheerleaders don't want to talk about them either. They only know how to talk up the glories of private insurance. And put out deceptive graphs.

Insurance industry insider who has been deeply involved in the health care fight emails to declare victory. "We WIN," the insider writes. "Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor.” http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Insurance_industry_insider_We_win.html

[Ikonoklast]

52. And what do they do when they find out, too late, that they are ill

and need insurance? Now that previously 'healthy' or 'young' person has a un-insurable pre-existing condition.

Funny thing about life, and aging...eventually, if one keeps living, one is no longer 'young'. And health issues start up even for the healthiest among us. These would be the people that would suddenly find themselves in dire straits in a health emergency, with no insurance of any kind.

They are trying to game the system by betting they will remain healthy, not get into an accident, or have sufficient funds on hand their entire lives to pay for any medical bills.

Do you think that even with a totally government sanctioned and run single-payer system, these people would be able to use the excuse of youth or health to opt-out of paying the taxes levied by the federal government to run that program? Even if you have your own retirement plan, you still cannot decline to pay into Social Security, for example.

When these formerly young and healthy people suddenly need health care that they can't obtain or afford because of a health emergency, then the rest of us will end be the ones paying for it, through either higher taxes or health care premiums.

Either ALL participate in any reform plan, or NONE. There can be no middle, no opt-out. Thats' what we have now, and it is failing.

[jeanpalmer]

54. They are self-insured

So they pay on their own. I know twenty to 30 younger people who do this. Insurance makes no sense to them. It's an overpriced product that doesn't give them true value, it will be overpriced under the plan, and they don't need it.

They're not making any excuses for not buying insurance. They don't need to. They pay for health care out of pocket, like they do for groceries. Do they need an insurance company to pay for their groceries? No and they don't need an insurance company to pay for their healthcare -- for even higher priced procedures, they've made the cedision to pay out of pocket. In almost all instances, they come out ahead by not buying insurance.

These bills are trying to bring them into the system, not because they need health insurance, but because they're needed to subsidize other people. And so for that purpose, they're going to get deprived a a large sum of their income where before they were paying almost nothing.

These people are not gaming the system. They're looking at an overpriced underperforming insurance product that makes no sense for them to buy. The gaming is about to be done by the mandates that bring young healthy people into the system and overcharge them for insurance, using the overcharge to pay for other's healthcare. There's no onther reason for bringing them into the system mandatorily except to gouge them.

[Ikonoklast]

56. Any one of those people are one accident or health emergency away

from total financial disaster, unless they are all massively independently wealthy.

Yes, they are gaming the system by betting they will never have a major health emergency that will financially devastate them and their families, throwing their unpaid incurred costs onto the rest of us either through higher premiums or taxes.

They also assume their current financial condition will remain the status quo, into the future.

It won't.

Unless extremely lucky, over time, it will change.

The folly of youth.

[Pisces]

58. Here is a chart that spells out the basics

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/chart-of-the-day-3.html

[LooseWilly]

22. Being mandated to buy a product from an industry I don't trust, with insufficient regulations...

sits ill with me. It would appear I am not alone in that judgement.

I can see the usefulness, in the grand scheme of things, of mandates... that way those of us who are healthy (ish) will be able to help maintain corporate profits for the insurance industry, in order to offset the potential increased costs in case the insurance companies can't find a loophole to continue to deny coverage/payments for those that they have been taking money from.

I get it. "You're a cow, now give me some milk or go home" -to quote Bob Dylan.

Some of us aren't content with mere bovine citizenship, however. And, in fact, some of us object to being forced at de facto gunpoint (legal sanctions are always, in the end, enforced at gunpoint) into the status of bovine citizenship.

If the mandates aren't the be all/end all of this bill... then why not remove them?

I'm betting that isn't gonna happen though. The whole point of the bill is to make the poor "pay their share", so that the corporations that provide insurance for their "respectable citizens" won't have their rates increasing "artificially" because of the costs of care for the uninsured (who obviously aren't "paying their share", as if lack of resources were a moral failure).

[vaberella]

31. I've used this example before...single payer would be mandated (even though de-facto) if enacted.

secondly...mandates make sense even if I don't like them either. Actually my problem is the punitive costs that piss me off rather than the mandate. If they lessened to make it nearly obsolete I wouldn't have the problem and I'm sure there is no jail time although other's like to exclaim there is. However, mandates make sese. Majority of peple without insurance are sick. Mainly due to some sort of pre-existing condition or something. It won't work too well for insurance companies or even if there was a PO to have all these sick people in one thing. YOu need to offset that with healthy peole. Many healthy people go without insurance because either they can't afford it or don't see a need for it if they can afford it. That being said you have them in the pool as well to make it bigger and lessening the costs in the long run. It works. It makes sense.

The other reason is because my having people get insurance it also lessens the costs to us which is currently the problem. Any time someone gets sick with no insurance that's a cost to us and an increase on our premiums and what not. By havig these people have at least basic care it again adds to lowering costs.

Either way the same thing would happen wh single payer--people just don't want to see it as a mandate.

[LooseWilly]

39. "Majority of people without insurance are sick"? Really... can you diagnose me?

And here I thought I felt healthy.

And I thought I didn't need to buy a corporate product I didn't want if I didn't want to.

"The other reason is because my having people get insurance it also lessens the costs to us which is currently the problem." basic grammar/spelling issues aside... I think this captures the point quite nicely. Essentially it says that the Democrats in Congress have decided that private insurance is just dandy, and that having (forcing) people to get insurance lessens the cost to us (those of us who get it by other means than by having to pay out of pocket in accordance with a solo agreement with an insurer)... which is currently the problem (for those of us with employer provided insurance, who might face fee increases because of insurance companies trying to charge us to cover the fees of the uninsured who use services and don't "take responsibility" for paying for their own care).

Ahh, the plight of the affluent and insured... having those rates rise because of the burden of the treatment expenses of the poor who have to use ERs as health care centers.

Why no employer mandates to cover the poor? Why do they (we) have to cover our own insurance out of our own pockets? To make sure that the policies of the more affluent don't continue to rise at a rate that might inconvenience the affluent? Ohh, the humanity!!

You can continue to view the issue through the prism of middle class interests if you like. You can even consider me criminal when I ignore the mandate and wait for the feds to catch me before I pay the fines... but I refuse to buy private health insurance to assure the middle class policy holders a slower rate of policy price increases.

Why doesn't the middle class just be honest with themselves, and mandate no coverage whatsoever in even an ER without health care coverage? That's what everyone afraid of "spiralling health care costs" as a result of "the expenses of the uninsured" really want, isn't it? Let's be honest... just like so many other things in this country... it's about the fear of one's tax paid dollars being used to help out "the other"... the blacks, the latinos, the poor.... the "other" is bad and a drain on society... and steps need to be taken to be sure that they don't get "our tax dollars"/"our health care dollars".

I can live with that. Cut me out of the ERs too. I frankly don't care.

But don't pretend to yourself that this is about a responsible "reform" of the healthcare system.

[vaberella]

42. Are you denying that there are probably millions of people w/o insurance b/c of pre-existing cond. ?

I'm actually one of the millions denied insurance because of preexisting conditon ad mine is genetic---actually most of the women in my family have the same genetic condition and majority of us don't have insurace. Only the ones who were undiagnosed got by by lieing t the insurance company.

In any event that's neither here nor there. Actually it's not spelt wrong it's just grammatically incorrect, but the spellcheck doesn't catch my when it should be by. By that's neither here nor there...people on this board like to use it as a wedge in order discredit a post. I've seen it done so many times, it boggles the mind.

In any event, private insurance was going to be around for a long time. It would always be around. In NYC when you get medicaid or medicare you must choose a primary insurance plan. Yeah, so you can put in the pool of doctors they offer. If people use medicare as an example, I'm suprised so many don't attack how it's distributed in many states. In NYC you need to pick a plan, ie Fidelis, Health plus, whatever. The state gives you a medicaid/medicare card but you are part of a pool of specific doctors. If you're issue is health insurance as being a choice, then you are not arguing the bill. You're arguing the health insurance...and disregarding the fact that millions of peopl will benefit. Such as those wit AIDS can be insured with a large pool of money spent on expanding their care. That chidren will be able to be on their parents plan until 27. That they are making medicare more efficient. You statement disregards so many other positives because to you all else is unimportant unless we abolish health insurance.


As for the last paragraph going on...I don't get your statement. I'm far from middle class and I'm Black,I wonder where that puts me.

In effect like many others on DU no health care reform bill would have been sufficient, mandate or not because it deals with the insurance involvement. This mandate thing being an excuse is a weak one. I don't understand people who claim they want health care reform, pick one issue an sit on it when the real issue is far more generalized and involved and ultimately weakens their position. You'd never be satisfied unless insurance companies would be eliminated all together.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

46. I have no health insurance, I am feeling pretty healthy

I didnt realize that I might be getting sick, thanks doctor.

[vaberella]

47. Why are people being intentionally obtuse....?!

Because you are currently healthy....do you think you will always be that way? I thought so until I was diagnosed with a genetic condition and I have no health insurance. God forbid that anything should make you sick...but it is not out of the realm of possibilities and this has always been the case when reviewing the argument. You who like to say, "I'm healthy and don't have inurance," to blow off my statements---just use it because you have no other argument.

[cali]

50. yeah, but you don't do it well. Silver provides a cogent argument

and supporting points for his claim. You provide.....nothing at all.

[DCBob]

53. You dont get the "game".. Nate is saying the kill-billers are using irrational logic...

to defend their cause because they are so extreme in their in beliefs. They have become blinded by political bias so they cant even debate sensibly anymore. Perfect comparison to the Global Warming deniers.

[Name removed]

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[Clio the Leo]

3. Another excellent interview by Tweety today....

.... that included Nate and a poor, misguided former House candidate who CLEARLY didn't know what she was in for trying to debate Tweety on the health care bill.

lol .... Go get 'em Chris!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/34515301#34515301

[mcablue]

7. Typical Matthews. Inviting easy targets. Why didn't he invite Markos or Jane Hamsher

Or Greenwald?

Because they would make his ignorant self look lost and embarrassed.

He invited a figure so obscure that you don't even know the name.

Typical Chris "Obama-gives-me-thrills-up-my-leg" Matthews".

[Clio the Leo]

9. or Howard Dean. ......... "HA!" NT

[SanchoPanza]

41. Jane Hamsher isn't an easy target?

Hamsher is too busy being a demagogue to know what she's talking about when it comes to policy. If you trust her and FDL (exempting TBogg, of course) as a source of information, then best of luck with you. Markos is getting to that point as well, as his disingenuous segment with O'Donnell on the excise tax demonstrated. He only appears to "do well" when they're someone on who knows less about the policy than he does.

I would agree about Greenwald, but the only point he's made is that the bill is significantly different than the actual proposals Obama made during the campaign. Which is true. The spirit of the policy remains, I contend, but Obama made the choice of actually passing meaningful reform rather than dictate to the legislature what the reform package must include. His criticism isn't so much policy, but politics. And thats fine. But it does nothing to convince me that the Senate bill, even without further compromises with the House bill in conference, isn't worth passing.

[falcon97]

43. Interesting, as I've given up on FDL.

I saw her on Ed's show today and was completely distressed. I've been without health care for 18 months. Granted, not as long as some. I'm just frustrated with her poo-pooing insuring the uninsured.

I'm a single-payer advocate, like most on DU I assume. I'll put my faith in Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown over Jane Hamsher. Tom Harkin's starter house analogy seems completely rational.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

48. Or maybe Ed Schultz who all but called him out on his program

I think he is right down the hall. Matthews would rather interview people who agree with him and easy targets like crazy teabaggers.

[Armstead]

4. Yep those nasty old bill killers. I wish they'd get realistic and stop demanding ponies

[budkin]

5. I like Nate Silver but he's getting a bit full of his own opinion.

[mcablue]

6. Agree. He is very cocky and is losing his cool

He wants to get a job in a big newspaper or the administration. Punching the hippie is the way to acve that. But he is losing his patience and it's showing.

[pscot]

14. He's a math geek

It come with the territory. But to prove he's wrong, you have to bust his numbers.

[krawhitham]

36. You just described 95% of DU

[spiritual_gunfighter]

49. Its more like 35% who speak very very loud n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. I'll take Silver and his numbers any day...

over Kos or any of these other people.

[TomCADem]

10. I Think There Is A Paradigm Shit - Far Right Is The New Left

Look at a lot of threads referencing remarks by key Republicans opposing health care. These comments are often followed by "I agree" or "They are right on this one!"

The Republican Party use to be the pro-civil rights party, but there was a switch under Lyndon Johnson. Likewise, if you read E.J. Dionne's book about the history of the liberal movement, you will find that many Neocons are actually formal left leaning liberals. Heck, Reagan used to be a Democrat! Finally, many liberals are now opposing efforts to regulate greenhouse gases dimissing all such efforts as "corporatist." This anti-government paranoia is equally at home among the Teabagging crowd.

So, perhaps we are on the cusp of a new paradigm shift, as the far right becomes the new left.

[damonm]

33. get real.

[Truth2Tell]

37. Run for your lives!!!

The Left is the new Right!!!111!!!

[jonnyblitz]

45. paradigm SHIT? what in hell is THAT?

:o

[saltpoint]

11. It's very interesting that Nate Silver cites the irrationality of FireDogLake.

Those FireDogLake folks are a self-provocational bunch.

Nate gets it just right.

Recommended.

[Hissyspit]

16. Jon Walker has been doing some excellent work at FDL.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7288173

[saltpoint]

18. Walker is not without talent, certainly, but as talented as he is, he is

not as vivid a talent as some of the others among the FireDog contributors, which is a list that includes a genuinely brilliant film-maker and an accomplished concert pianist, and that's just for starters.

My problem with that bunch is that they're politically loud without being navigationally mature.

[Hissyspit]

And Nate Silver isn't? Comparing those with an alternate opinion on the Senate bill to climate

deniers?

[saltpoint]

21. ...in the context of dialogue and discourse, which Silver

felt was met with fierce resistance at FireDog, and while I agree with Silver, he is not the first to say so.

[pschoeb]

12. Isn't this Gruber analysis from the primaries? I'm not sure if one can use

The analysis of Obama's or Clinton's primary health plan and use them as a model for the Senate plan with and without mandates. That seems like really shoddy analysis by Nate.

[dave29]

17. Nate called the election, with specifics, better than anyone else.

Say what you will about him now, he knows his numbers.

[saltpoint]

23. He does. In my next life Nate Silver is going to be my best

pal in grade school and high school so I'll have half a chance with math.

[girl gone mad]

19. An odd analogy, to be sure.

Environmentalism is a progressive ideal, as is opposition to subsidizing the fraudulent health insurance industry with what is essentially a moderately regressive tax.

I would imagine that it is very difficult to engage in an ideological political debate when you are a statistician by training. I can sympathize with Nate's frustration, though I disagree with his analysis.

[SpartanDem]

28. Not really

in either case you a group people who think they're entitled to their own set of facts. Numerous liberal policy experts like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and Nate Silver have pointed how this bill will lower cost and be big improvement over the situation today. Yet the kill billers deny evidence in front of their face usually nothing more tired catchphrases.

[girl gone mad]

34. Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein and Nate Silver have all been known to be wrong..

quite frequently, in fact.

While there may be some evidence that the bill will improve rates for certain groups of people (I am most assuredly not one of them), there is also ample evidence that over the long term a large group of Americans could be much worse off under this reform, which rescues the failing health insurance industry rather than implementing strong cost control measures and guaranteeing access to health care, not merely health insurance.

As I stated earlier, silver is arguing statistics while those he casually denigrates are looking beyond the mere numbers and pondering unquantifiable concepts like justice, corporate ethics, corruption and the true meaningfulness of this reform. To give an analogy in contrast Silver's, it's like trying to explain the 3rd dimension to a flatlander. Nate draws conclusions based solely on the figures that his computer has spit out, but when lives, political control, human progress and even the principals on which our society stands are at stake, computer models are rendered a rather unsophisticated tool.

[ima_sinnic]

51. +++1

but I think you're wasting your time trying to explain it to the mindless lalala-singing cheerleaders for whom forced stuffing of the corporate coffers and going into perpetual indebtedness to insurance co's is now somehow a national duty of the highest order.

[Sultana]

20. Ohhhhhhhhhh, burnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!

Take that Obama-haters

[Hissyspit]

24. Not a burn. A weak analogy and silly insult. He fails to address the numerous

loopholes of which the industry will take advantage. And false premise from you. Not everyone who rejects the Senate bill is an "Obama hater." He does indeed know his numbers, it's his analysis that is lacking.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

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[girl gone mad]

30. Well, it looks like you enjoy ad hominem attacks..

so now I regret wasting 5 minutes in a reply to you below. Narcissists are so boring.

[girl gone mad]

29. Not an Obama-hater and not singed in the least.

Nate Silver runs monte carlo simulations and draws conclusions based on statistical analysis. My background is in quantum cosmology (quantum physics and astronomy, basically), so I understand exactly where Nate is coming from, but the numbers don't tell us everything. There are real human costs and unknown variables such as corporate corruption, legislative loopholes, amendments caused by future lobbying efforts, regulatory capture and potential customer revolts, which simply can't be plugged into a computer model. He needs to accept the limitations of science when it comes to a system as complex as the three-body health care, health insurance and government system we are dealing with here. Predicting elections based on continuous polling and demographic data is one thing. An enormous piece of legislation effecting a system with millions of moving parts has a far higher likelihood of uncertain and unpredictable outcomes than a political election.

In addition, Silver ignores the actual ethical arguments made by progressives opposed to the bill, choosing instead to resort to a fairly lame ad hominem attack.

ETA: in point of fact, this is a 4-body system, since we also need to factor in the consumer, and irrational consumer behavior is a notoriously common feature of American markets.

[Undercurrent]

32. I trust the science.

Formal science includes statistics and logic, and that is Nate realm. Therefor, I trust Nate's work.

[girl gone mad]

35. The title of his article is illogical...

and it's only downhill from there.

[SwampG8r]

38. not a good comparison

the global warming is the stuff of fairy tales
the health care bill at least does exist and can be proven to do so

[optimator]

55. I'm really tired of Nate Silver

This little baseball statistics geek will NEVER be a respected national political analyst.