For several months now, whenever the topic of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I’ve been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate effects. We don’t know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are available, but the samples are smaller, so they’re not as good; the census is the gold standard. Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won’t be available until 2015.
I stand corrected: These data won’t be available at all. Ever.
No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was. The New York Times reports that the Barack Obama administration has changed the survey so that we cannot directly compare the numbers on the uninsured over time....
...The White House is always looking for evidence to show the benefits of the health law, which is an issue in many of this year’s midterm elections. The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Council of Economic Advisers requested several of the new questions, and the White House Office of Management and Budget approved the new questionnaire....
...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....
Megan McArdle goes off on suspicious Census Bureau/Obamacare methodology switch
...Why? Because as the New York Times reported, the Census Bureau has decided to throw out its 30-year formula (and therefore its baseline) on measuring America’s uninsured population, and replace it with a new methodology. The revised math, according to Census officials, will result in much sunnier-looking results. Independent of the statistical merits of this change, the timing, quite literally, could not be worse. ..
...Part of her evolved rationale was that the first batch of results under the new statistical regime would be from 2013, not 2014, so there would be one year of “pre-Obamacare” data to use as a fresh baseline. One whole year! As opposed to, you know, three decades of consistently measured trends. Beyond that, 2013 wasn’t just any ordinary year; it was fraught with Obamacare-related upheaval, including millions of cancellation letters landing in people’s mailboxes. Not to mention that various components of Obamacare were implemented as early as 2011. So last year hardly offers a clean, pre-Obamacare data point off of which judge its policy effects. Cut the spin. Abandoning a trend line developed over three decades at the precise moment that analysts are trying to quantify the impact of the biggest healthcare overhaul in decades can fairly be described as anti-data. It’s anti-science. It might well cross the line into fraudulence. Even the Times’ headline grasped the cause-and-effect nature of implementing this major alteration right now: “Census Survey Revisions Mask Health Law Effects.” McArdle concludes her vent session by predicting Democrats’ inevitable political chicanery come September:
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....
RAND study: By our estimate, 3.9 million people signed up for ObamaCare, not 7.1 million like the White House says
Jay Carney: No timetable for releasing information about Obamacare sign-ups
White House spokesman Jay Carney said he doesn't know when the administration plans to release more information about the 7.5 million Americans who signed up for Obamacare on the federal exchanges by the March 31 deadline.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “are working to crunch the numbers and assess the data and collect it in a way that provides as much information as possible,” he said Monday during his daily briefing with reporters.
“I don't have a timetable for when that would happen,” he added....
