We have become inured with the Obamacare rollout involving painful unfamiliarity with numerical accuracy, and this makes the attempt by this group to become involved in the Census a formula for disastrous figures. Kathleen Sibelius just stepped down from her post as director of HHS, a tenure rife with uncomfortable data, and now the Obama camp is looking to further obfuscate the problems with its landmark legislation.
A report in the New York Times reveals a plan that alters the Census Bureau questioning standards behind its health insurance metrics. There is more than speculation this could lead to beneficial results for the administration. Communications within the Census Bureau display concerns:
• 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.
Other quotes from within the agency extend the subterfuge in play. The fact that this survey was dramatically revised in conjunction with the Obamacare rollout had another Census document calling it “coincidental and unfortunate timing.” Further, in regards to the previous versions of the questionnaires used, statisticians at the Bureau declared it provided an “inflated estimate of the uninsured”, and that it often led to “measurement errors.”
Well, doesn’t this just figure? (pun unavoidable).
According to this report the President and his bean counters are manipulating the data on two sides. The new questions, and not policy enforcement, provide a lower amount of uninsured. This will statistically become a “success” for Obamacare. Not only are they altering the metrics to get a more favorable result, the statistics used to show uninsured numbers were “inflated”; the already exaggerated justification was actually more inaccurate. The migraine this induces inspires me to #GetCovered.
And now this group that has shown an aversion to statistical accuracy wants to control the compilation of federal stats. All of the problems since the implementation of Obamacare have involved figures; and often, the lack of numbers. Recall, this agency budgeted around $90 million for the main website and after three years it ended up costing well over $600 million. The only integer it generated for months was a 404-error. Jay Carney has given countless press conferences where he resisted giving out numbers like an Amish virgin in a nightclub. Sibelius for her part was grilled on numerous occasions by congress and was consistently incapable of finding enrollment amounts — yet somehow this crowd managed to track in real time the exact count of people who linked to the ACA web site from the “Between 2 Ferns” video.
It does not take a degree in accounting to see the administration massaging numbers. For six months nobody was able to determine a concrete figure regarding ACA customers. Then suddenly, on the sign up deadline date, the arbitrary goal of just over seven million enrollments was achieved with an amount just over that amount. No totals were available however for pesky questions such as, how many were previously uninsured, how many were younger customers, and how many have paid? It was obvious anyone who merely visited the website were tabulated as an “enrollment”, and what do you know? Yay, we hit our number! This is like counting everyone who merely browsed through the photos on the eHarmony website as “marriages”.
Now these digit-averse souls want to fiddle with the way the Census constructs its data. Put into the perspective of tax season, it is as if they kept seeing numbers on the calculator that made them look bad so they yanked out the batteries. This should send a chill through most voters. Considering the numerous aspects of governmental power that relies upon the Census results having this group jumping in to monkey with the methods is more than problematic. Look at the way they have been secretive and coy with numbers they currently control; letting them dictate policy on other data they could fabricate is Orwellian, and not just because his book was titled with digits.
Nothing good can result from this. This crowd has been secretive with data, dishonest with results, and now they will alter techniques which provided flawed figures from the start.
The involvement of Rachael Ray in the Obamacare promotions makes a lot more sense now, given the way they are cooking the books for this fiasco.