Two Years On: Obamacare

WTH does that mean?

 

I might if I have time, but as I posted above, I'm not all that interested, specifically, in infant mortality when it comes to judging our system of delivering health care to our citizens, to the exclusion of everything else.

We rank last among 19 industrialized nations in amenable mortality -- in deaths that could have been prevented.

 

According to Sourcewatch, The National Bureau of Economic Research receives funding from a relative handful of conservative sources. If this is incorrect, my apologies.

www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research

Funding

Between 1985 and 2001, the organization received $9,963,301 in 73 grants from only four foundations:

John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife)
Smith Richardson Foundation

 

Were seniors worse off before Bush plan or did Bush plan create bigger financial hardship? (i.e. donut hole)

Does Obama plan build on Bush plan or does it amend it?

 

I have no reason to think that's incorrect. Over that 16-year period, per that finding, NBER received approximately $625,000 per year (on average) from those sources. I have no idea whether it was a relatively even stream of grants (i.e., whether not all or most of that money came in in 2001). But per the NBER's current reports, the organization received roughly $33 million in grants just last year. I don't know what its grant budget was in 2001, but in 2009 it was about $30 million. If you project backwards at that (percentage) change rate, you get a 2001 budget of about $20 million. These are cocktail napkin calculations, so there's lots that can be wrong with them, but I suspect they're in the ballpark.

But, honestly, why should you care? Do you seriously dismiss the findings of research scholars out of hand simply because their financial support (or that of the umbrella organization) comes from someone with whom you're at ideological odds?

 

As a professional skeptic, I'm less likely to trust research that may have been tailored to an ideology, yes.

 

I don't want this to come across as a personal attack, so if it does, I apologize. But that sounds like those climate-science deniers who blow off some finding or another because it came from Berkeley. That's not skepticism, in my book. That's an unwillingness to believe anything other than what is already believed.

 

If I'm equally skeptical of the two poles in any oversimplified public policy argument I feel I'm less likely to ingest bad information.

 

A professional skeptic would, you know, read the research and find reasons to criticize the methodology.

 

Well, of course you are. It's also the case that you're less likely to ingest any information.

 

No. It's just means I have to work a lot harder to find good information.

 

Ah, if only it were that easy.