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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: Lane3 who wrote (4018)1/18/2008 8:59:29 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 42652
 
It would be nice to have such a computer model, but it would be far from definitive. The model may have biases of the modeler built in to the program. Even if it was completely without bias (and is that even possible), it would reflect the real world in a very imperfect way.

It would be a starting point for conversation and for analysis, but not much more.

Well for very limited changes, if you assume all else is equal, and assume no secondary effects or feedback, than yes it could answer some questions. For example if it was constructed correctly and you put the right data in, it could answer my question (How much would France pay for medical care as a percentage of GDP if they paid our prices for health care workers and prescription drugs?).

But of course in the real world there would be secondary effects, feedback, and unexpected changes (both changes as a result of the variable your changing, and changes unrelated to the variable which would complicate the calculation).

And even with the simple "All else remains exactly the same" assumption, you couldn't get solid answers about life expectancy because we don't know with any level of precision exactly how much each of the numerous factors we consider (and presumably numerous other factors that people haven't even thought of) effect life expectancy.
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