You might come to regret this quote.
Speaking as an outsider in this discussion: regardless of your own personal experience in the field, which may indeed be impressive and extensive, when you make an assertion of fact people are going to want to see citations. Saying you don’t have to post those because you’re an expert isn’t going to work (it’s more likely to get you mocked). That’s how discussions work around here.
If you’d like to stick around here, I suggest practicing a few things. First, bring a citation for the shit you are saying. Peer reviewed journal articles. Research reported by reputable journalists. This gets people to believe that you are not talking out of your ass and gets people to take you seriously. Second, practice focusing your posts on not simply quoting yourself as the resident expert on the subject. For example, you could have provided a single reference for any of the things you have claimed. I don’t suggest coming to a board in…hmm…what’s that, November 2012?..and then waving your dick around like you’re the only one here that knows anything about anything. It’s implied in the guidelines of the forum that you provide citations for your assertions, professional or not.
We have physicists who post here about physics. They often provide links in those posts. They’re under much less pressure to do so than you are, because it is well established who they are and what they do.
I didn’t “admit” you’re a professional in the health policy field. I said I don’t doubt it. But that doesn’t mean I believe you either. I neither doubt nor believe it. It’s just a claim you’ve made, and I don’t judge it true or false.
To say I “doubt” it would typically imply that I think you’re lying. But I don’t think you’re lying. Neither do I think you’re telling the truth. I have no clue who you are.
If you want to provide, as your link, some kind of professional credential found online, that would work as the “citation” I said you should provide (“I’m an expert, and here’s my opinion, and here’s the proof I’m an expert” is more credible than “I’m an expert and here’s my opinion,” but less credible than “I’m an expert and here’s my opinion and here’s the evidence for my opinion.”)
Strangely indirect, though, since I assume you can provide something more direct…
Frylock and GIGObuster, please take note of the way Sitnam responded to me. This is the way you need to respond to people like me. Sitnam has done an excellent job of forcing me to elaborate my assertion on the difference between health insurance and auto insurance. He responded to my concept with a concept, and not with a direct contradiction, personal insult, or by saying I needed to quote references lest I be automatically wrong. It is too easy to knock you guys down when you put partisanship before the concept.
Sitnam, you make a very good point: When it is used, auto insurance may present an expensive fix, but it’s usually a one-time fix. In contrast, the costs of health insurance may encounter years of expensive fixes. It is an actual problem that people hold off on purchasing insurance until they need it, which raises the costs for everybody else. This is an attitude especially seen in younger populations.
However, the problem with making everybody buy insurance is that it’s a band-aid fix to the system. It takes money from the healthier population and redistributes it to the older population, and thus eases the financial burden for those who need it more. What a mandate doesn’t do is address the cost and access issues that led to the increased cost of health care in the first place. Without reforms such as allowing carriers to sell policies across state lines or liability tort reforms, costs will keep going up across the population spectrum, and especially because dedicated money will be flooded into a system with limited resources; the purchasing power of each health care dollar goes down when there’s too much money and not enough services on which to spend the money, leading to continued price inflation. But a secondary issue is increased demand for access to the limited medical services available. All the newly insured will want to use their health insurance because it cost them so much. Again, this translates to months waiting to get an appointment and increased pressure on emergency departments. There’s simply not enough physicians to handle the demand.
This isn’t to say that I don’t think people should go without access. For every dollar spent on preventive primary care, $40 is saved down the road in prevented tertiary care. Imagine the amount of money that could be saved if we as a culture adopted a prevention mindset instead of a treatment mindset.
And thank you, Sitnam, for being logical.
Did you work for Bill Clinton?
And you can’t be serious to expect that I am going to publicly identify myself. I am a critic of the signature law who gets his money from the administration that wrote the law. I work with politicians, and I’m not stupid.
Suffice it to say, with all the numbers I quoted, it would have been pretty easy for you to check online to see whether or not I’m lying. Probably would have taken less time than figuring out that gem of logic you provided.
The audacity! We increased healthcare coverage and then PEOPLE USED IT! Those poor people will try and take advantage of everything. If they had just stayed home the there would be more room for the truly deserving job creators.
I disagree. You said several things about how things went in MA which are not obvious. Your citation for the things you said is, “I’m an expert.” You’re new here. I don’t know who you are. So your word that you’re an expert simply doesn’t do anything at all to establish that what you said about MA is true. I have responded in exactly the right way–which is this: I explained why I don’t believe you, (nor do I believe you’re wrong,) and explained what the conventions are for these kinds of discussions here at the SDMB.
In responding to an argument, there are two non-exclusive approaches one can take, as I’m sure you know. One can question the premises, or one can question the reasoning. As you noted, Sitnam questioned your reasoning, thereby showing a need for clarification. Good for him! You are right that he did a good thing here! Yay! Meanwhile, I am not questioning you’re reasoning, I am questioning one of your premises. And when premises are being questioned, exactly the right way to respond is to provide a citation. Sitnam didn’t need to ask for a cite because he was talking about your reasoning, not your premises. I need to ask for a cite because I’m talking about your premise.
Thanks for letting me know. I am open to being mocked if that’s the modus operandi of this discussion board. If any fact I present is untrue, then please call me out on it. I also respectfully submit that if mocking is acceptable for not citing references, then it should be even more acceptable to mock those who substitute politics in exchange for measured, reasoned discussion.
And wait, what have we here:
Emphasis mone.
I haven’t said anything particularly complex or confusing, certainly nothing untrue.
I have no idea what you are going to do. I don’t have any idea who you are. Some experts here readily identify themselves, others do not. Who knows which kind you are?!
You are taking up a lot of extra time talking about credentials etc. It would be very easy for you to just provide references for your factual claims. I don’t have the first clue how to find out, from any official source, whether the claims you made about Massachusettes are true or not.
“All the numbers” you quoted? I don’t know what you’re talking about. The post I asked for references for contained a single number and I wasn’t asking for a citation for it. I was asking for references in support of your claims that, as a result of the health care law in MA, newly insured people couldn’t see a doctor in MA because there was an influx in new patients, and so they went to the ER for treatment instead.
It is your job to provide substantiation for the points you make. We try not to be like “discussions” that take place on news-talk-entertainment venues, where people are allowed to say whatever they want, true or false, and require their interlocutors to interrupt them to contradict if they can get a word in edgewise.
I’m probably not the poorest worker, but I’ll be losing my employer provided health insurance. It’s too early for me to work out all the details, but it looks like it’s going to be an additional burden to me under the new system. We’re taking delivery of more manufacturing robots next week to reduce employees, but we’ll still be over 50.
Pretty dreary outlook. There are very few doctors left here, our hospital is going through about the third change of hands in the last year and will likely close soon, and no insurance.
The two things that I really don’t understand:
All the talk about how the high healthcare costs are the fault of the insurance industry. I’ve seen the itemized statements, and the problem I see is for the amount of services billed. The charges for some services are staggering. The insurance industry didn’t set the charges.
Second, the US Space Program. We were told that the US had to privatize the space program, the government just wasn’t as efficient as private industry. Yet we were also told that private industry was incapable of efficiently running health care, only the government could manage such a program. So the government couldn’t handle the relatively minor space program, ate their lunch. But handle 20% of GDP in healthcare? No sweat. I’m skeptical, but happy to be proven wrong.
I’ll no doubt be on a fast track learning curve here shortly, and I think it’s great that Americans on the fringe will be getting health care. It doesn’t appear it’s going to work out all that well in my case, financially, but I guess we all need to pitch in and carry our load.
And the point I’m making is that you are tap dancing to avoid dealing with the evidence, as pointed before, examples like Massachusetts shows that layoffs are not going to be as numerous as the ones opposed to reform are implying or affirming.
You don’t have to be a policy analys to have an opinion on health care costs. I am an expert in my field - and that makes it EASY for me to find citations.
To me - this levels the playing field. I can tell all I need to know about who is telling the truth about small businesses when republicans talk about how devastating this will be to small business. 96% of small businesses aren’t even subject to penalties (obviously dollar wise this is different).
You don’t need to be an expert on the ACA to tell that something can’t be this awful thing for something when it doesn’t even effect 96% of something.
For the other 4% - they should be offering healthcare. If everyone is forced to - then this levels the playing field and I seriously doubt they will be forced out due to this. Common sense says supply/demand will take over.
Aren’t there tax breaks for small businesses that didn’t used to exist? Is it possible it will help some people?
I would like to see the real differences between Obamacare and Romneycare. Romneycare can’t be all that bad - only 33% in MA oppose it:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/15/426255/poll-romneycare-overwhelmingly-popular-in-massachusetts/?mobile=wt
I would love to see all the press releases that went out after the bush tax cuts showing all the jobs that were created after business were saving tens of thousands a year.
To suggest that only experts can have an opinion on this is silly - and further they don’t have to provide cites is silly.
Ooh ooh ooh I am a health care analyst too!!! And I am actually a manager! That means I have more XP and am close to grinding my way up another level!
Dude is right in that when people are given access to health care that they use it. But I don’t think that is a huge surprise to anyone. He is also right that we have a severe shortage in many parts of the country with regards to PCP and physician extenders. That is a problem that would take decades to fix and some of it is due to how physicians a reimbursed. (Encourage specialists, discourage primary care) but this also an issue that will get resolved due to market changes given an enough time. Just because people rush to the doctor as soon as they get insurance doesn’t mean that they will keep rushing to it every three months thereafter.
But I think that he is missing the larger point. That has nothing to do with layoffs. There are many many many different reasons that companies are relegated to laying off people. But when asked, they usually give just one. Something easy, something fun, something that absolves themselves of the blame.
The actual costs of Obamacare are no different than any other cost of doing business. Consumers expect to pay it. We do not expect companies to sell products at a loss (ah the days of the dot com bubble…). Every time we buy anything, some of the purchase price goes to pay for health insurance now. Heck we are paying for the corporate jet, too. And for every sick day that little sick Sally has had. (Pure speculation, but wouldn’t less sick time due to better access to care equal more productivity equal lowered costs equal more Profit?)
But I do know this. I am an expert. Trust me. I am a level 99 manager of health care analysts.
TL;DR - Is Obamacare causing layoffs? A minuscule amount of the layoffs that will be attributed to Obamacare will actually be CAUSED by Obamacare. Like maybe 1. A certain senior health care analyst who works for the federal government springs to mind…
Let’s say that Obamacare is a government takeover of health care, and furthermore that all of the same people who support Obamacare also support the privatization of the space program.
Even given all of this, surely it isn’t impossible to believe that some things are run better by the government than others? Do you think that everyone who believes that the government should run our court system also believes that the government should be in charge of all artwork created in America?
Why do you think they’re not obvious, Frylock? Is it because being a professional, I would know things that are less than obvious to the layman?
You want an easy way to know if I’m full of stuff? You have access to the internet. With the sheer number of things I’ve said, you should have be able to quickly counter anything I’ve put forward. It’s easy enough to make me put a sock in it, yet I haven’t seen you try that.
I’ve seen plenty of posts here without citations, and I doubt you’re all professional policy analysts. Why am I the only one, therefore, suddenly being told to give citations?
Frylock, based on the fact that within this discussion you’ve presented your views on the law without presenting citations yourself, while still not yet telling me what your own qualifications are to expound on the health policies of the ACA, I’m going to assume that this is an attempt at character assassination to distract the discussion away from the fact that I’ve presented facts that you simply are unprepared to counter. A high school student could have shut me up by now by posting links discrediting what I have to say.
Again, I’ll put it out there that you are likely someone who supported the law from the beginning without knowing what it does, simply as a validation of your political worldview, and suddenly you’re confronted by somebody who does this for a living and is knocking you down point by point. Instead of being capable of defending your beliefs, you present the fallacious argument that I shouldn’t be listened to simply because I have not proffered my credentials to you.
It is easy enough for a person to discredit anything I am saying, yet nobody who has claimed that I should be citing things (when they themselves have not, and are likely not professionals themselves, either) has bothered taking one thing I’ve said and put it under a microscope.
If you can’t defend yourself, give it up.
There are many reasons for the high cost of providing health care in the US. Not all of it is the insurers fault. And anyone who says that it is the sole or even main reason is ill informed. However, having a multitude of insurance companies provides a lot of overhead in our system. From billing, to contracts, to even just profit. There are several reasons that insurance companies raise costs. Duplication of services is another.
But a common problem for health consumers is that they see the amount charged on a bill and think that number actually means something. It rarely, rarely does. The amount that providers charge is largely a fairy tale number. It is kind of like the MSRP for health care. We would love to get it! But we never expect to. I my experience, most insurance companies have a set amount that they pay for service (often adjusted for location, wages, etc) no matter how much the provider charges. Some facilities (particularly trauma centers and those along major transportation routes) will have even higher charges because they get out of state patients frequently and patients paid via commercial insurance (i.e. car insurance). Because health insurance companies are limited by state it is not financially prudent for every insurance company to have contracts with every provider. Often these insurers will pay a percent of charges as the number of cases is typically low enough that it makes financial sense for them to do so. Basically (nowadays at least) this is the main reason that provider charges are nutso.
Oh and some providers are asshats and try to make self-pay patients carry the full bill. That is crap and those providers should be exposed. Any facility that I have ever worked for automatically knocked at least 75% off the total charges for any self-pay patient.
Dang. That’s harsh. Good thing we don’t have many high school students here.
It is easy to do when you attempt to say the microscope is not there, I’m referring to the Urban Institute report.
I have not seen anything coming from you to contradict what the Urban Institute reported from Massachusetts, remember you claimed that “Obamacare is causing layoffs. In particular, it’s the part with all the taxes to pay for the program.” So do you have any evidence to counteract what they and others report on how reform and the taxes are not a cause of job losses or a heavy burden on businesses?
It is interesting also to notice how the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority and Executive Office of Health and Human Services, does not report what you are claiming regarding the troubles (other than the almost non existent layoffs) they are supposed to be experiencing.
As others pointed out, if you are an expert there should be no trouble pointing at other experts that are supporting what you have claimed so far, or just admit that indeed you can’t.