Obamacare - Amin. Creative Bookkeeping (AKA Cooking the Books) is as Transparent as Concrete

[maxparrish]

For the "hope and change" and "forward" crowd, the 'most transparent administration in history' has had a smashing record of candor: Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS scandal, the NSA scandal, and now Obamacare. Mind you, the mumbo-jumbo Obamacare info shredder has had to be more creative, and cost a few jobs, but found it difficult to invoke the usual cry of 'national security', "confidential tax payer records", and we have plausible deniability over a domestic program that affects millions. Yet no one disputes they've done a bang up job not collecting, screening and/or reshaping data for maximum smoke generation (perhaps Eric Holder, the prior master of opacity, should be taking notes!).

Census Survey Revisions Mask Health Law Effects

By ROBERT PEAR APRIL 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Census Bureau, the authoritative source of health insurance data for more than three decades, is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.

The changes are intended to improve the accuracy of the survey, being conducted this month in interviews with tens of thousands of households around the country. But the new questions are so different that the findings will not be comparable, the officials said.

An internal Census Bureau document said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, in a test last year, produced lower estimates of the uninsured. Thus, officials said, it will be difficult to say how much of any change is attributable to the Affordable Care Act and how much to the use of a new survey instrument.

...“We are expecting much lower numbers just because of the questions and how they are asked,” said Brett J. O’Hara, chief of the health statistics branch at the Census Bureau.

Robert Pear of the New York Times obtained internal Census documents that note that the new CPS system produces lower estimates of the uninsured as an artifact of how the questionnaire is structured. One memo refers to the “coincidental and unfortunate timing” and that, “Ideally, the redesign would have had at least a few years to gather base line and trend data.”

Prior to this post I had being suggesting that the hapless roll-outs, and, poor, uncertain and unavailable data were merely the result of the administration's unintended 'a clown act', but perhaps that was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt? What is certain is that the Census Bureau chose an approach, and is sticking to a timeline, that insures that uninsured numbers will be a couple of points lower than under the old methods, and that no robust method of splicing data between the time periods will be available.

But as one wag put it, "Why didn't we do this before, we could have lowered the number of uninsured without the cost".

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/u...vey-revisions-mask-health-law-effects.html?hp

 

[fromderinside]

...maxparrish poisoning the well before the fact so <snip>


What is certain is that the Census Bureau chose an approach, and is sticking to a timeline, that insures that uninsured numbers will be a couple of points lower than under the old methods, and that no robust method of splicing data between the time periods will be available.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/u...vey-revisions-mask-health-law-effects.html?hp

You should splice in after a several year review and comment period after chose an approach. But no. Just being the happy warrior again (irony intended)

The article is quite good. At long last we'll be getting numbers that are more reliable more traceable over time, and that can be compared with actual state statistics. Way to go Census Bureau.

I'm amazed maxparrish would post this.

 

[dismal]

The article is quite good. At long last we'll be getting numbers that are more reliable more traceable over time, and that can be compared with actual state statistics. Way to go Census Bureau.

I'm all for more accurate surveys, however I don't recall a lot of discussion about how we knew the old survey overstated the problem of the uninsured.

I guess it remains to be seen if shameless Obama apologists will use the new survey to overstate the benefits of Obamacare. I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt until they do.

 

[maxparrish]

You should splice in after a several year review and comment period after chose an approach. But no. Just being the happy warrior again (irony intended)

The article is quite good. At long last we'll be getting numbers that are more reliable more traceable over time, and that can be compared with actual state statistics. Way to go Census Bureau.

I'm amazed maxparrish would post this.

However, I am not so amazed you'd post a denial of the obvious - obvious such as the timing noticed as suspect by most of the press (including the NYT). No one is objecting need for a change (for example, changing an survey question from if a person holds insurance at the moment, vs. anytime in the last year) but that is not the issue, is it?

For those few who may have been spending their days sleeping under the the town parking meters, the issue of enrollment levels (and types) in ACA has been one of the key metrics in measuring the promise of Obamacare. People, it so happens, would like to know how many of the previously uninsured enrolled, how many had their policies canceled, how the total number changed, etc. using comparable data. Turns out the Census Bureau is going to make sure that won't happen - the most transparent administration in history has made sure that researchers cannot directly compare the numbers of uninsured over time. Officials have confirmed, the survey questions are so different the findings are not comparable - but it seems the uninsured will be two or three points lower than prior to the survey.

So why, in the first year of implementation of the largest change in health care since Medicare would they chose this moment to make the gold standard in surveys (the Census Bureau) unable to compare the number of insured to prior years? Why not delay? Total clownville incompetence in the administration, or more politicization of agencies by Obama enforcers?

... As Aaron Carroll says: “It’s actually helpful to have a trend to measure, not a pre-post 2013/2014. This still sucks.”

The new numbers will suffer, to some extent, from the same bias that the old questions suffered from: People are better at remembering recent events than later ones. Quick: On what day did you last get your oil changed? What month was the wedding you attended last summer? If it was in the last few months, you probably know. If it was someone you’re not that close to … well, the summer months kind of blend into each other now that you’re a grownup, don’t they?

And what has been happening in the most recent months? A whole lot of change! Policies were canceled, benefits changed, people shifted around their coverage in anticipation of the new law. That doesn’t make for a very good baseline. It will be a very good measure of who has insurance right now, in 2014, but it’s not where I’d want to start my 2013 baseline for our new law. That’s why they should have done this for 2012 -- or waited until 2016 -- to give us actual comparable data for the transition period. ...

I find it completely and totally impossible to believe that this problem didn’t occur to anyone at Census, or in the White House. It would be like arguing that the George W. Bush administration might have inadvertently overlooked the possibility that when the U.S. invaded Iraq, there would be shooting. This is the biggest policy debate of the last 10 years, and these data are at the heart of that debate. It is implausible that everyone involved somehow failed to notice that they were making it much harder to know the effect of this law on the population it was supposed to serve. Especially because the administration seems to have had a ready excuse as soon as people reacted to the news.Even if the administration genuinely believes this is defensible, why would they give anyone reason to believe that it is cooking the books? Because those charges are being made, and they’re a lot harder to dismiss than the complaints about birth certificates or dark intimations that the administration has simply made up its enrollment figures out of whole cloth.

I just don’t get it.

I mean, I can certainly think of explanations, but I can’t quite bring myself to believe the worst of them. Which leaves me with the only slightly-less-utterly-appalling conclusion: At some point, very early on in the process, folks noticed that asking the new questions would make it difficult to compare Obamacare’s implementation year to prior years, and decided that assessing the effects of the transition wasn’t nearly as important as making urgent changes to … questions we’ve been asking basically the same way for a decade and a half.

No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense, either. Let’s go back to inexplicable, shall we?

If the administration is really serious about transparency and data-driven policy, as I’ve been told for a year now, then it will immediately rectify this appalling mistake and put the old questions back into circulation double-quick. But we’re more likely going to hear the most transparent and data-driven administration in history citing these data -- without an asterisk -- to tout the amazing impact of its policies.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-15/is-obama-cooking-the-census-books-for-obamacare

As Greg Mankiw of Harvard asked, why the sudden change?

Sometimes it's better to split the baby

This story about the Census Bureau is amazing to me: The Census is changing its annual survey about health insurance. As a result, the new data will not be comparable to the old, making it much harder to gauge the effects of the Affordable Care Act.

Is this a White House conspiracy to hide the effects of the law, as some have suggested? Maybe, but probably not. I have a lot of respect for the government data producers, so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Yet I don't see why the Bureau needs to make such a sudden change. Why not, for a few years, give half the sample the old questionnaire and half the new one? This procedure would provide a basis for eventually splicing together the old and new time series.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2014/04/sometimes-its-better-to-split-baby.html

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The Census changes are a *BUSH*-era thing, it just took a long time to test.

 

[Metaphor]

I work for a national statistical office. NSOs have data quality frameworks and surveys are in development years before they are in the field. The idea that Obama, or anyone in his administration, made calls to influence the data collection instrument is so patently absurd I can only pity the tinfoil hat brigade. It's a wonder we haven't seen sharp rises in aluminium toxicity.

 

[laughing dog]

I work for a national statistical office. NSOs have data quality frameworks and surveys are in development years before they are in the field. The idea that Obama, or anyone in his administration, made calls to influence the data collection instrument is so patently absurd I can only pity the tinfoil hat brigade. It's a wonder we haven't seen sharp rises in aluminium toxicity.

I think you can attribute that to the inherent impermability of their heads to the realities of the outside world.

 

[maxparrish]

I work for a national statistical office. NSOs have data quality frameworks and surveys are in development years before they are in the field. The idea that Obama, or anyone in his administration, made calls to influence the data collection instrument is so patently absurd I can only pity the tinfoil hat brigade. It's a wonder we haven't seen sharp rises in aluminium toxicity.

Dodging. Why NOW? Why not wait a few years AND IF NOW why not as Greg Mankiw suggests, so that data can be far easier to splice accurately?

 

[maxparrish]

Dodging. Why NOW? Why not wait a few years so ACA effects can be compared, AND IF NOW why not do it as Greg Mankiw suggests, so that data can be far easier to splice accurately?

Your jumping to denial of Administration intentions BEFORE sufficiently accounting for the survey timing of implementation and structure. To repeat: no one is saying that the changes were not warranted, nor is anyone questioning that there was not a legit basis and history. But that does not answer the questions.

 

[laughing dog]

Dodging. Why NOW? Why not wait a few years AND IF NOW why not as Greg Mankiw suggests, so that data can be far easier to splice accurately?

Perhaps the need for greater accuracy trumps the paranoid delusions of terminally butthurt.

 

[maxparrish]

Perhaps the need for greater accuracy trumps the paranoid delusions of terminally butthurt.

LOL...how sweet.

 

[Metaphor]

Dodging. Why NOW? Why not wait a few years AND IF NOW why not as Greg Mankiw suggests, so that data can be far easier to splice accurately?

It's now because the survey instrument is ready for the new cycle now, that's why.

When you have any non-sampling error, (e.g. a biased estimator like the health insurance questions systematically underestimating the insured), you have to bite the bullet and correct it at some point. Yes, you sometimes lose direct comparison with a time series, but that's the price you pay for more accurate estimators.

maxparrish, do you really believe that the US Bureau of Census is either in league with the Obama administration or simultaneously so sympathetic to Obamacare and so scared of its reputation being damaged that they did this deliberately? Or do you merely think it unfortunate timing?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's now because the survey instrument is ready for the new cycle now, that's why.

When you have any non-sampling error, (e.g. a biased estimator like the health insurance questions systematically underestimating the insured), you have to bite the bullet and correct it at some point. Yes, you sometimes lose direct comparison with a time series, but that's the price you pay for more accurate estimators.

maxparrish, do you really believe that the US Bureau of Census is either in league with the Obama administration or simultaneously so sympathetic to Obamacare and so scared of its reputation being damaged that they did this deliberately? Or do you merely think it unfortunate timing?

And where did they get the time machine? This change has been in the works since before Obamacare came along.

 

[fromderinside]

However, I am not so amazed you'd post a denial of the obvious - obvious such as the timing noticed as suspect by most of the press (including the NYT). No one is objecting need for a change (for example, changing an survey question from if a person holds insurance at the moment, vs. anytime in the last year) but that is not the issue, is it?

No. You're right. The issue about signups is important only to those who piled all their eggs in that political basket.

Sorry to disappoint, but, getting better statistics has been under consideration for years. We've known for some time that asking one whether they have coverage is a basket question. Does that mean now, this year, when I wasn't working (medicaid), etc, etc?

The decision to change questionnaires and measurements is political only. It is political to the extent that one can argue if yesterday's bad numbers change less than one might project when more precise definitions of coverage are at hand when a unified, more or less, program is introduced that ACA 'failed'.

Sorry Charley. that little canard has been removed from the table. Now you have to go out and find actual numbers of people covered at a particular time, probably state by state, to determine whether the new program worked.

If that makes things rough for your side, so be it. The bottom line is numbers on uncovered persons will be reduced and they will be reduced further by the signups for ACA.

Public numbers are public numbers. If the idiots on the right had thought things through rather than screaming 'death panels' at the top of their lungs for four years, they might have realized accepting medicaid was a good idea and one that could be verified before and after ACA. But no. they went all political. Now the numbers their political ox was feeding on has been slaughtered. Non coverage of the poor will be a big political issue in the 24 uh uh states. There might be a switch of the house as a result. Tough cookies.

Oh, yeah,

Ta da.

 

[maxparrish]

It's now because the survey instrument is ready for the new cycle now, that's why.

When you have any non-sampling error, (e.g. a biased estimator like the health insurance questions systematically underestimating the insured), you have to bite the bullet and correct it at some point. Yes, you sometimes lose direct comparison with a time series, but that's the price you pay for more accurate estimators.

maxparrish, do you really believe that the US Bureau of Census is either in league with the Obama administration or simultaneously so sympathetic to Obamacare and so scared of its reputation being damaged that they did this deliberately? Or do you merely think it unfortunate timing?

Do I believe Eric Holder's Justice Department, State Department, and IRS is tainted by political dissembling and a lack of candor - ya, you betcha. Do I think the Census Bureau, when Obama took it out of the Department of Commerce and made it a hand-maiden to the White House under hard core political operative Rahm Emanuel had less than academic and dispassionate motives ? What'da you think?

Do I think the 2012 kerfuffle (and the ongoing fallout) over falsified unemployment data in the C.B. enhanced anyone's trust in this White House managed group?

And now, as the New York Times reveals, the Census Bureau “is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.”

As already mentioned by Megan McCardale, it is highly implausible that both the CB and the White House managers were unaware of the impact (it also went through the Obama OMB) - the most likely explanation that it was ready to be deployed and the "unfortunate timing" was found to be useful to make it difficult to measure the effects of ACA in the next report, just before the elections. AKA intentional benign neglect.

 

[maxparrish]

No. You're right. The issue about signups is important only to those who piled all their eggs in that political basket.

Did you forget that the biggest EGG was getting the 48 million uninsured folks insured?

Sorry to disappoint, but, getting better statistics has been under consideration for years. We've known for some time that asking one whether they have coverage is a basket question. Does that mean now, this year, when I wasn't working (medicaid), etc, etc? The decision to change questionnaires and measurements is political only. It is political to the extent that one can argue if yesterday's bad numbers change less than one might project when more precise definitions of coverage are at hand when a unified, more or less, program is introduced that ACA 'failed'.

Yes...yes...yes - we have already been over the reasons for the changes, and as stated several times before no one is saying the changes were not needed. The whole point is that YOU CANT PREDICT or PROJECT what the numbers should be when you dump one methodology for another. Of course, you can use the method Mankiw suggested to give you a year to year measurement with two sets of questions/methods, at least that would have provided a more accurate splicing.

But they did not do that.

Sorry Charley. that little canard has been removed from the table. Now you have to go out and find actual numbers of people covered at a particular time, probably state by state, to determine whether the new program worked.

Unsupported assertion.

If that makes things rough for your side, so be it.

Ah, motivation for the timing of the changes acknowledged, thank you

The bottom line is numbers on uncovered persons will be reduced and they will be reduced further by the signups for ACA.

Of course. And rates and deductibles are driven up and choice and quality of care is reduced for most of those already insured. And many existing policy holders are forced on to plans they don't like, because their old ones were canceled under ACA.

Public numbers are public numbers. If the idiots on the right had thought things through rather than screaming 'death panels' at the top of their lungs for four years, they might have realized accepting medicaid was a good idea and one that could be verified before and after ACA. But no. they went all political. Now the numbers their political ox was feeding on has been slaughtered. Non coverage of the poor will be a big political issue in the 24 uh uh states. There might be a switch of the house as a result. Tough cookies.

Yep, and bears eat lettuce.[/QUOTE]

 

[Metaphor]

Do I believe Eric Holder's Justice Department, State Department, and IRS is tainted by political dissembling and a lack of candor - ya, you betcha. Do I think the Census Bureau, when Obama took it out of the Department of Commerce and made it a hand-maiden to the White House under hard core political operative Rahm Emanuel had less than academic and dispassionate motives ? What'da you think?

I don't know what you think. That's why I asked. For all the obfuscating, it sounds like your answer is 'yes' -- you believe that changes to a survey instrument that have been in the pipeline for years have been politically manipulated to obscure statistics about insurance. And if you believe that, I don't know what to say to you. It's such a manifestly absurd thing to believe I feel sorry for you for believing it.

Do I think the 2012 kerfuffle (and the ongoing fallout) over falsified unemployment data in the C.B. enhanced anyone's trust in this White House managed group?

And now, as the New York Times reveals, the Census Bureau “is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.”

As already mentioned by Megan McCardale, it is highly implausible that both the CB and the White House managers were unaware of the impact (it also went through the Obama OMB) - the most likely explanation that it was ready to be deployed and the "unfortunate timing" was found to be useful to make it difficult to measure the effects of ACA in the next report, just before the elections. AKA intentional benign neglect.

So it was widely agreed that the old method was wrong, the new method will lead to better statistics, it was ready to be deployed, and they deployed it. That sounds like a sensible series of events to me.

 

[maxparrish]

I don't know what you think. That's why I asked. For all the obfuscating, it sounds like your answer is 'yes' -- you believe that changes to a survey instrument that have been in the pipeline for years have been politically manipulated to obscure statistics about insurance. And if you believe that, I don't know what to say to you. It's such a manifestly absurd thing to believe I feel sorry for you for believing it.

So it was widely agreed that the old method was wrong, the new method will lead to better statistics, it was ready to be deployed, and they deployed it. That sounds like a sensible series of events to me.

In another thread we discussed a phenomena in analyzing political policy, that of partisans screening and discounting facts not to their liking and refusing to see flaws in their own reasoning. We noted a study (cited by Vox's Klein and Krugman) that found that when a story line confirms a partisan bias, even smart partisans become as dull witted as the least intelligent in their own ranks. Sometimes these folks become so obtuse, I find myself refusing to believe that they actually believe the things they just wrote (or said).

Yes, "It was widely agreed that the old method was wrong (my note: actually sub-optimal), the new method will lead to better statistics, it was ready to be deployed, and they deployed it." As stated repeatedly, this was never in contention so drag that dead horse off stage; seriously, how many more times must it be beaten?

The question has been obvious, YES THEY DEPLOYED IT, but why deploy it at the worst time for pre-post ACA analysis of effect? Why not in 2012 or 2016? Would that have not made far more sense? Why is it "sensible" to you that they dodge having good comparative numbers for a controversial policy, hmmmmm?

Finally, there is no obfuscation, my position is very much like other critics:

"As already mentioned by Megan McCardale, it is highly implausible that both the CB and the White House managers were unaware of the impact (it also went through the Obama OMB) - the most likely explanation that it was ready to be deployed and the "unfortunate timing" was found to be useful to make it difficult to measure the effects of ACA in the next report, just before the elections. AKA intentional benign neglect."

By the way, the health economist Aaron Carroll adds to the incredulity on the timing:

Many, including me, have been using CPS data for a long time to track the numbers of uninsured. Yes, the questions are imperfect. I’ve discussed that, too. This report was from 2005! But the standardization of them made it easier to track changes over time.

And NOW is the time to be able to track changes to the uninsured. Is the ACA working? You think we might want to know that?

Altering the questions right now so that we can’t measure what’s going on is terrible. If they were so bad they needed altering, a few years ago would have been better. Or, a few years from now. But right now? It’s killing me.

UPDATE : Yes, I know we’ll get data on 2013 with the “new” questions. But it’s actually helpful to have a trend to measure, not a pre-post 2013/2014. This still sucks.

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/argh-census-edition/

 

[Metaphor]

The question has been obvious, YES THEY DEPLOYED IT, but why deploy it at the worst time for pre-post ACA analysis of effect? Why not in 2012 or 2016? Would that have not made far more sense? Why is it "sensible" to you that they dodge having good comparative numbers for a controversial policy, hmmmmm?

It's sensible because they deployed it when it was ready. They did not deploy it before it was ready, that would be madness. They did not delay deploying it, that too would be madness.

What you appear to have an inability to realise is that deploying it when it was ready (ie now) has the side effect of breaking the time series. Breaking the time series is not the main effect; the main effect is improved estimates. But you believe the real reason to deploy it was the side effect, and not the main effect. For this to be true, it would require a grand conspiracy by the US Census Bureau executives and the White House, as well as backward causation in time. I am skeptical of the former and, except for Doctor Who, entirely incredulous of the latter.

 

[laughing dog]

Of course, the Census Bureau has been testing the new method and it already has comparisons of the differences in the results between the estimates using the current methodology and the estimates using the new methodology. So, any halfwit ought to be able to take the information and make adjustments to either the history or the new estimates if they wish to compare trends. In fact, it may very well be the case that the Census Bureau or some other gov't agency will generate such a series.