Veronique de Rugy: The Facts about the Government's Medicare Cost Projections

[felpaluche]

it shows

[jaymthegenius]

De Rugy is a beautiful lady :-)

[jaymthegenius]

@kristopheraugust In our capitalistic society even our so-called "poor" can drive from Boston to New York and keep a reasonable diet. Despite that, bad food is popular among the poor despite the fact that there is always an organic food store nearby or an organic section at their own food stores. Diet and environment are two predictors of success in life and intelligence. Increase awareness and access to information and they'll know why they shouldn't consume dye water masquerading as juice.

[UTubekookdetector]

When the gov't says "X will cost Y" just grit your teeth and get your wallet out. PS the CBO projections of ObamaCare being "deficit-neutral" are a case of garbage in, garbage out. Sebelius already admitted to Congress that they're double-counting those phanton $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. We all know the Dems have no intention of cutting or reforming Medicare.

[TacticalCitySlicker]

Even the suggested debt plan is very meager as it is going on the assumption that current tax rates increase and at the same time the economy increases.... which isn't going to happen...

[TheStrazy]

Makes me think we need to elect at least one person who can actually count and not just make up numbers to fit. Hell they could have wrote in the word "blue" for a cost projection and they would have voted for it because no one even reads the legislation anymore.

[MRSketch09]

...What was it something like:

"You get more of what you support" ? Something like that. Because people on government aid, they can have kids.. who then thinks its alright to be sorry asses, and the whole thing just grows and grows.... and grows. 

[coffeebuzzz]

Don't spend a TRILLION dollars on war each year and you'd be able to buy band aids for poor people. It would suck to be poor in the US, which is now fast becoming a third world police state.

[trime1851]

Virtually all government cost projections are lies.

The objective is to fund the program or project. If the true cost figures were shown, it probably won't be funded. Government will never admit to error or mismanagement, and there will never be consequences to those that submitted and approved a dishonest proposal, Instead, whatever money is required to finish or sustain the effort will be requested as "essential" and the appropriations will be made. SAD.

[98nafets]

So sick of hearing about how great the CBO's estimates are when defending Obamacare. How about just use common sense when it comes to these massive spending projects?

[eirefrance]

@98nafets Probably because the thing you're stupidly calling "Obamacare" like some kind of rote memory Palin zombie isn't a spending project. But thats just my 'opinion.'

[98nafets]

@eirefrance "Probably because the thing you're stupidly calling "Obamacare" like some kind of rote memory Palin zombie isn't a spending project."

Ladies and gentlemen, we have here another overly sensitive liberal who gets upset when you start labeling things based on their description.

[eirefrance]

@98nafets Ladies and gentleman, we have here an overly dense idiot who gets upset when the complicated subject called reality is presented to his drooling fuck of a mind.

[98nafets]

@eirefrance I'm not upset with reality, the facts are on my side. (See the recent study that stated Obamacare would cost 3 times more than previously thought of, and add massive amounts to the debt). I just get upset when people who believe they are informed because of what the media feeds them thinks anyone who disagrees is stupid.

[wye4379]

What they should do (if there were serious) is create a realistic projections model with inputs for general inflation, interest rates, medical costs inflation, etc and then run it through a 10,000ish simulation monte carlo analysis and see how it fares. Then they should take 1-2 Standard Deviation right tail result out of this analysis and call that the limit of what a program is expected to cost.

Needless to say NOT how its done now.

[PissedFechtmeister]

@wye4379 They're not even allowed to make realistic assumptions, so it's no wonder that the numbers are always disasterously wrong.

[Emil246]

@wye4379 Thats why being a dictator is awesome.

[wye4379]

@Emil246 Its not about being a dictator. Its about producing junk estimates because you use optimistic assumptions and YOU NEVER STRESS THOSE ASSUMPTIONS.

[wye4379]

@wye4379 I realize my first post was a little stat geeky so here is a translation. To get a realistic result you have to create a model that allows for things like feedback loops (say on interest rates) and multiple assumptions. You then need to create realistic ranges for your assumptions (eg, weighted average cost of government funding between 1 and 15%). Then you need to run what is called a monte carlo (try wikipedia) simulation with your assumptions. CONTINUED

[wye4379]

@wye4379 This analysis should be run a lot of times (eg 10,000+) so that you are capturing all of the dynamic relationships within the model that are not readily apparent. After you have run this analysis you should take the results and plot them out on a bell curve (I'm assuming that they're "normally" distributed). You then need to assume that the cost of the program will be between 68% and 95% of the most expensive cases. This is a conservative estimate of the actual cost of a program.

[wye4379]

@wye4379 I'm reasonably sure the CBO doesn't do this (although I'm sure they know how), and it has nothing to do with them. It does however have everything to do with politicians wanting to sell us shit programs (bought with our money of course) without realistic estimations of their likely cost. Frankly its not surprising as almost all government accounting is a complete fucking joke (they get away with shit that would have made ENRON blush) so why should the projections be any different.

[Darkwizzrobe]

I like how by law the projections that politicians use have to be wrong and that an alternative has to be used to find a more accurate number that is disregarded by policy makers