WSJ on the Census Bureau changing the manner in which the insured are counted:
Out of the blue, the Census Bureau has changed how it counts health insurance—at the precise moment when ObamaCare is roiling the insurance markets.
Since 1987, the Current Population Survey, or CPS, has collected information on the health-insurance coverage status of Americans. The annual reports are widely cited because their large sample sizes improve accuracy, the data are gathered constantly, and they tease out state-by-state details. But this year the Census revamped the CPS household insurance questions, muddying comparisons between the pre- and post-ObamaCare numbers. The results of the new method will be disclosed this fall...
Robert Pear of the New York Times obtained internal Census documents that note that the new CPS system produces lower estimates of the uninsured as an artifact of how the questionnaire is structured. One memo refers to the "coincidental and unfortunate timing" and that, "Ideally, the redesign would have had at least a few years to gather base line and trend data."
Ideally, the White House would have provided those years. For changes this substantial, standard procedure would be to ask the new and old questions concurrently. With an overlap, researchers could study changes over time using the long-term historical information without introducing bias, as well as interpret emerging developments with new tools....
this sudden change will undermine public trust in the supposedly nonpartisan institutions of government. Muddying a useful source of information about ObamaCare's results is definitely unfortunate, but our guess is that it wasn't coincidental.
"this sudden change will undermine public trust in the supposedly nonpartisan institutions of government."
ReplyDeleteIf only that were true. Most likely the general public is completely unaware of this subtle and complex change in demographic analysis. In fact, I think most of the public couldn't even spell "demographic analysis" much less have an understanding of it. The collective intelligence of American voters is shockingly low. We live in a country dominated by voters who are superstitious, ignorant, gullible and foolish in the extreme. This is why all forms of democracy degenerate into tyranny and failure. The alleged wisdom of the demos is entirely mythical.
It won't undermine public trust. Those that still believe the government will believe whatever numbers get thrown at them.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
Delete.
With or without the change, the dumbazzes will believe Government figures.
The morally corrupt will attempt to sell them.
The Intelligent won't buy.
Yup. Almost all sheep ENJOY being sheep. Stupidity, ignorance, envy, lazy, and weak-minded simps describes the negative character traits of such people well. They will forever remain on the government plantation.
DeleteThe federal government did the same thing with Nixon's 55mph NMSL. The same year it was imposed the government redefined how it calculated fatalities from automobile crashes. In the old standard a fatality was counted if a person died up to a year later. In the new standard it was a much shorter time period. Now consider the oil crisis meant less driving coupled with a changing of the counting and there was a dramatic reduction in fatalities. This was then attributed to the 55mph NMSL.
ReplyDeleteFor the next 20+ years we were stuck with this thing. In some places we still are. But the damage it has done has been largely permanent. Even now, 40 years after, this drop in fatalities is cited as support of the speed kills agenda.
And so it will be with Obamacare. By cooking the stats that the mainstream will repeat over and over again, it will be generations or longer before the myths can be dispelled.