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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (42351)	3/23/2010 6:49:45 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I say "might be" better, not something that should really be subject to requests for proof. But the evidence is the history of CBO projections. With low numbers coin flips can be all over the place, but the overall rule is a fair coin flip is a 50/50 thing. The CBO is I believe 0 for 4 so far in terms of getting its estimates of large government health care programs right. And it also shows bias not just error (by bias I don't mean intentional bias, but just that its errors trend in the same direction). 3 out of 4 times its underestimated the costs by a significant amount. True 4 is a small sample, so it doesn't amount to proof, but you where after all talking about going with the best information we have. The best information we have suggests that the CBO estimates are unreliable, and at least weakly suggests they are likely to be underestimates. The sample would be 5 not 4, but I don't have any information about VA health care cost estimates. I suspect that they where also underestimates but I don't actually know this to be the case. with a formal econometric analysis The above probably doesn't qualify, but that doesn't mean much. Formal econometric analysis is hardly the only type of evidence or argument, and in fact is often a very unreliable or contradictory (with different analysis showing very different results). The point here is that the formal econometric analysis that we are discussing (the CBO estimates of federal health care programs costs) has been shown to be unreliable. I don't need my own extensive analysis to point that out.