3 ms·

I don't know. I think the stories from people who are actually trying to use the ACA should bear a lot of weight.

by CrowFly 11y ago

Analemma_ 11y ago
No, they shouldn't. "The plural of anecdote is not data": of course you can go around cherry-picking people who are unhappy with the ACA; health care is extremely complicated, no solution was ever going to be perfect, and this law in particular attracts people with an axe to grind. But I can find just as many anecdotes of people who are a lot better off under the ACA. Stories are pointless; the only effective measurement is the bird's-eye view of the numbers as a whole: how many uninsured are there now, what is happening to the mean/median premiums, etc.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pdabbadabba 11y ago
It seems to me this depends on how those people are selected, and the purpose to which one is trying to put the article. An article about just a handful of people who choose to pay the penalty (rationally or not) is not a very enlightening way of evaluating the program overall, standing alone. I don't think this was the purpose of the piece, but it is naturally the way the piece will be used by opponents of the program. This is generally the role played by anecdotes in any policy discussion. (See the top of this thread for more examples.) For this information to be truly valuable for this purpose, it would be joined with a representative collection of stories about other people's experiences so one can form an accurate impression of how the program is actually working. (It could, of course, be debated whether the New York Times has provided this broader context in a meaningful way through its other ACA coverage.) The article does provide some interesting human detail, and illustrate the depth of some people's convictions about (i.e., opposition to) the ACA, however, which seems valuable and enlightening in its own right. But this angle doesn't well serve anyone's political agenda.

I don't know. I think the stories from people who are actually trying to use the ACA should bear a lot of weight.

by CrowFly 11y ago

I don't know. I think the stories from people who are actually trying to use the ACA should bear a lot of weight.

No, they shouldn't. "The plural of anecdote is not data": of course you can go around cherry-picking people who are unhappy with the ACA; health care is extremely complicated, no solution was ever going to be perfect, and this law in particular attracts people with an axe to grind. But I can find just as many anecdotes of people who are a lot better off under the ACA. Stories are pointless; the only effective measurement is the bird's-eye view of the numbers as a whole: how many uninsured are there now, what is happening to the mean/median premiums, etc.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pdabbadabba 11y ago

It seems to me this depends on how those people are selected, and the purpose to which one is trying to put the article. An article about just a handful of people who choose to pay the penalty (rationally or not) is not a very enlightening way of evaluating the program overall, standing alone. I don't think this was the purpose of the piece, but it is naturally the way the piece will be used by opponents of the program. This is generally the role played by anecdotes in any policy discussion. (See the top of this thread for more examples.) For this information to be truly valuable for this purpose, it would be joined with a representative collection of stories about other people's experiences so one can form an accurate impression of how the program is actually working. (It could, of course, be debated whether the New York Times has provided this broader context in a meaningful way through its other ACA coverage.) The article does provide some interesting human detail, and illustrate the depth of some people's convictions about (i.e., opposition to) the ACA, however, which seems valuable and enlightening in its own right. But this angle doesn't well serve anyone's political agenda.