I realize now that this should have been percentage, not millions (as noted by adaher, in a frustratingly falsity-free post). But anyway, Terr is still wrong, as the rate of uninsured under Obama is the lowest it’s been since he’s been in office.
Yes, but there are two of us, see? So double the savings. Plus, of course, cheaper meds. Plus, visits to doc in the box places for minor things used to be $100. Now they are $35. And of course emergency rooms if needed are no longer a crusher.
Of course a youth with no pre-existing conditions would find these things unimportant. But I’m not a youth with no pre-existing conditions. I’m one of the undeserving poor you conservatives despise and would rather see dead. Cheers!
I don’t have enough information to judge your claim. Was the old policy ACA compliant? Did it cover hospitalization and surgeries? If it was truly good insurance and the premiums were raised and coverage reduced under the ACA, then it’s fair to say you came out at a loss. But if it was junk insurance and had the sole virtue of being cheap, then you’re comparing rotten apples to fresh oranges.
Well, yeah, but, no, right?
I mean, figure $126 a month, over twelve months – you’re paying over $1500 a year now, plus $35 each time you want to see your doctor, and $35 each time your spouse wants to see the doctor. So if you see the doctor four times a year, and she sees the doctor maybe four times a year, that’s $1792?
Without insurance, it would’ve cost you – $1120.
Arbitrarily figure four doc-in-the-box visits a year for you, and four for her – with your insurance, you’re shelling out more than two thousand dollars total; make those visits at $100 a pop without insurance, you’re shelling out less.
But if, like me, you go the doc-in-the-box route less often than that, and don’t wind up needing to see your doctor four times a year – well, then, instead of being a mere hundred-and-fifty bucks poorer thanks to the insurance, you’re now three hundred bucks poorer or six hundred bucks poorer or whatever.
::checks math::
In fact, if you visit your doctor twice a year, and she does likewise, and you have a doc-in-the-box visit and so does she, you’d be a cool thousand dollars richer without that insurance than with it.
A hundred bucks cheaper? A thousand bucks cheaper? You may well still have had more cash in your pocket after buying the meds without insurance.
Of course, you can set me straight with a quick “No, you don’t understand; I see my doctor once a month; my wife sees her doctor once a week; and each of us racks up a double-digit number of doc-in-the-box visits every year.” But it’s entirely possible that, no, with insurance you’re getting exactly what you could’ve gotten without insurance, except you’re paying a little more to get it.
Well, as you said upthread, you took “a certain pleasure in the notion that if I DID have to go to an emergency room, my bills would be paid for by others, since I would have to go as an indigent.” So was that really on the table?
Where the heck did that come from? I don’t recall ever saying anything like that to you in particular, or about despising poor people in general to the point of wanting to see 'em dead. Why is that line in your reply to my copy-and-pasted remarks?
We see the doctor more like 12 times a year each, mostly to have our meds monitored. Could we get by with seeing them less often? I’d like that! But the doctors say monthly. Are they feathering their own nests? I don’t know. That would be legitimate grounds for agreement between us. I do think doctors manipulate the system to a certain degree, but it’s hard to know how much. I’d hate to just unilaterally refuse to see the doctor and be WRONG about it …
Not when taken in conjunction with the doctor visits. And I do go the doc in the box route less often … some years I don’t go at all.
Would LOVE that. Twice a year visits to the doctor would mean I practically didnt need medical care. You’re thinking maybe of those people who are young and healthy?
Done and done.
I’d really rather not go to the emergency room as an indigent, the pleasure I would take in stiffing others with the bill is a bitter one.
It was a generic “you.” I’m thinking of the conservative legislators who keep voting to repeal Obamacare without replaciing it with anything. We all know what they’re about.
In any event, you seem to have us confused with the young people who don’t NEED medical care. Sucks to be them, just as it sucks to be me in respect to auto insurance (I haven’t had an accident in decades, but I still have to pay those premiums.)
Moochers love mooching. No surprise.
Not according to the graph I gave. Hint: Obama came into office in 1st quarter 2009.
See those sharp points on your graph (which coincidentally is the same source used in the link from my OP)? Those are the 4 quarters of each year. Obama took office in January of 2009. The 1st quarter 2009 point is 16.1%. The 1st quarter 2014 point is 15.9%.
16.1 is bigger than 15.9. Your graph-reading skills need some work.
Let me type it slowly so you may understand.
Here is the graph: http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/psuderman/2014_03/GALLUP-MARCH2013.png?h=476&w=540
You see the line that says Q1 2009? You see where it intersects the green line? Is that point higher or lower than 15.9?
But in any case - plus a fraction of a percent or down a fraction of a percent - you mess around with a trillion-dollar industry, create an enormous new law, create an enormous upheaval, scream from rooftops that this will help the uninsured - and what you get is a fraction of a percent improvement - maybe? Yeah, go with it.
Ahh, I get it – you just don’t understand how the graph works. Let me help. The intersection with the green line was not when Obama took office. That’s not the first quarter – that’s a mathematical interpolation of the results between Q4 of 2008 and Q1 of 2009. The first measured (through polling) percentage of the uninsured under Obama was Q1 2009, which was 16.1%. The latest result is 15.9%, which is lower. So my OP was absolutely correct with regards to the data in this graph.
You’re welcome for this brief lesson in graph interpretation. Let me know if you don’t understand the meaning of the word “interpolation” – I’d be happy to assist on that too.
I’ll certainly go with the trend. If the trend does not continue, you might have a point. We shall see. But I congratulate you for an excellent, adaheresque walk-back of your (false) claim. A fine job!
The LINE says Q1 of 2009. The measurement was made somewhere inside Q1 of 2009 - maybe Feb or March, but the line is where Obama took office. So it is wrong to say that it was 16.1 when he took office - it wasn’t. It was somewhere between 15.4 and 16.1, and by interpolation (I hope you know what that means) lower than the current percentage.
Interpolations aren’t measurements. There was a measurement (a poll) in Q1 2009, and it was the first measurement of the rate under Obama. There was no Q0 poll – just a poll for the last quarter under Bush, and then a poll for the first quarter under Obama. And Q1 2014 is lower than the first poll under Obama.
So if you want to start a thread “an interpolation of the polling results show that the uninsured rate now may or may not be higher now than when Obama took office”, go right ahead – but my threat title is correct, based on the polling results.
I still think it’s funny that you found the exact graph in my OP and reposted it without realizing it. Not quite as funny as your wrongness here, but funny nonetheless.
It wasn’t done at the time that he came into office but quite a bit later. Since the previous measurement was quite a bit lower, at the time he came into office the percentage was lower than 16.1 - and probably lower than the latest today.
By the way, Terr, using your same (and incorrect) interpolation faux-logic, counting the midpoint between Q4 08 and Q1 09 as the point when Obama took office (even though that was not the point when he took office), I could use the current trendline and say that right now, because we’re very close to the beginning of Q2 '14, the actual uninsured rate is closer to 14.7%.
So whether I use my correct interpretation of actual polling values or your incorrect faux-mathematical interpretation of interpolations, my OP title is accurate.
Eureka! I found Gallup’s month-by-month poll (from Jan 09 to Jan 14)!
And guess what?!? It confirms that my statement in the OP is correct (except for one month in the middle of '09), and, more imporantly, Terr is incorrect.
I’ll repeat. Terr is factually incorrect.
Then you don’t know what “interpolation” means. Hint: “inter” means “between”.
No, I know what it means, but I take it you don’t know what “midpoint” means.
You don’t “interpolate” to a future point. That’s called “extrapolation”. First lesson is free.
Not needed – I never used the word “interpolate” to refer to a future point, just the same sort of flawed logic (which I rejected in the post in any case).
But now that we’ve both had the opportunity to see Gallup’s month-by-month poll results, we can happily conclude, finally, that the % of uninsured when Obama took office (Jan 2009) was higher than it was measured in Q1 of 2014.
Thank you, I’ve heartily enjoyed this exchange.
By 0.1%. Yay. Spend hundreds of billions of dollars, create a great upheaval in one of the biggest industries in the US, greatly increase taxes, cancel policies of millions of people, all for the sake of 0.1% decrease in uninsured. Something to boast about, definitely.