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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (17099)	4/19/2010 9:45:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The CBO has greater credibility than the RW. Not on this issue. The CBO has been wrong every single time its estimated the cost for a new major federal medical care payment program. And by wrong I don't mean marginally off, no one would expect perfection, but very far off. It was wrong on Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare Part D... So why should I take its numbers seriously on Obamacare? I might accept an estimate from an organization with a lousy track record, after all the person making an argument doesn't make it wrong or right, but I would need more than an argument from authority? X will happen because the CBO says it will, when the CBO has said all sorts of things that turned out to be false in this area before, just doesn't cut it.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (17099)	4/20/2010 1:34:05 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

This is a place for rational discourse. If you cannot refer to those who engage in rational discourse in more civil tone then this is not the thread for you. RE: "you RWers " If you were considerate enough to read and contemplate what Tim posts you would notice that he is a libertarian. By definition libertarians version of extremism is on the authoritarian / liberty continuum and not the conservative / liberal continuum. It has been observed that Tim Fowler (no relation to John Fowler) is more conservative than liberal, but he is hardly any kind of right wing extremist. If your perception of him is that he is dramatically more conservative than you then you are most likely identifying extremism in yourself rather than in Tim.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (17099)	8/6/2010 6:06:41 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

<<Folks who refuse to believe me tend to believe Krugman...>> Consider the Source Paul Krugman has an interesting post up on how to read a CBO document. He highlights the fact that the CBO reports using the assumptions it is required to make, not any estimate of what is particularly likely to happen in the real world: "What you need to realize is that the CBO is the servant of members of Congress, which means that if a Congressman asks it to analyze a plan under certain assumptions, it will do just that -- no matter how unrealistic the assumptions may be. CBO will tell you what's going on, but it will do so deadpan, doing nothing in terms of emphasis or placement to highlight the funny business." Since this is what folks like me were screaming from the proverbial rooftops during the battle over healthcare reform, when the supporters were highlighting the CBO's score to argue that it was going to reduce the deficit, I find this congenial. I wish that Krugman had walked his readers through this quite a bit earlier, of course, but better late than never. <snip> theatlantic.com