How much has Obamacare saved the American people?

Legion said:
So, it's not a fact, is it? It's an opinion, fueled by animus.
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It's either a fact or it isn't. It's my opinion that it's a fact, and that's fueled by clear observation of your behavior.

Is it a fact that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa? I believe so, based on various observations I've made of evidence. But I can never be 100% certain my opinion lines up with facts.
 
Legion said:
In the table below, the deficit is compared to the increase in the debt, nominal GDP, and national events.


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:thinking:
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That timeline doesn't track the entirety of the Obama era, but you can see the huge improvement even there.
 
Oneuli said:
But, as of the days before Obama took office, the FY 2009 deficit was projected to be $1.186 trillion. As of the last days of Obama's presidency, the FY 2017 deficit was projected to be $559 billion and falling.
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"Projected?"
 
Legion said:
And it isn't, since you cannot prove it.
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A fact is a fact whether it can be proved or not. For example, it's either a fact that there is no intelligent life on other planets, or it's a fact that there is intelligent life on other planets. At this point, I can't prove which of the two is a fact, but one of them is.
 
Oneuli said:
Here's a way to think about the success of Obamacare in slowing healthcare inflation. It's been about eight years and eight months since Obamacare was signed into law. We can compute healthcare inflation for 660 eras of that length leading up to the passage of Obamacare. Among the 660 eras, the lowest healthcare inflation was 30%, the highest was 137%, the average was 64%, and the median was 53%.

So, how has the last eight years and eight months looked in that context? Well, it turns out, healthcare inflation has been 26% -- significantly below the prior record-low for a period of that length. The savings from that low rate of healthcare cost growth is substantial. For example, we spend about $10,224 per capita on healthcare today. If, since Obamacare passed, healthcare costs had risen in accordance with an average rate of inflation rather than the record low rate we've had, it would be $12,898. So, for a family of four, you could think of the difference as a $10,696 of additional healthcare costs, just for a single year. And that figure gets bigger every year that our healthcare spending growth remains below average.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIMEDSL
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Whereas there were a few parts of the law that were enacted in '11 that saved money, ACA took effect in full in '14.
 
Legion said:
"Projected?"
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Yes. You cannot determine a meaningful deficit figure for a particular day, because of how budgets work. They're done on a fiscal year basis. The fiscal year that was in swing when Obama took office was FY 2009, which started October 1, 2008. Using FY 2008 as Obama's baseline wouldn't be fair, since we were already almost a third of the way through the following fiscal year when he took the reins (and the fundamental work of annual appropriations for that year was already done, such that he could only really influence supplemental appropriations). But using FY 2009 as Obama's baseline also wouldn't be fair, since there were supplemental appropriations in FY 2009 that Obama signed, so he's in part accountable for it.

That's why taking the projection as of January is the fairest method. That way, his baseline includes the spending that had already been done or committed to before he took the helm, but not the spending he added that year. Similarly, on the back-side, his last fiscal year would consider the expected spending for the year as of when he handed things off, but not the supplemental spending (or later revenue cuts) that are attributable to Trump.

Regardless of what you think of that method, the big picture numbers are clear. The deficit as about half the size, when Obama was leaving office, as when he took office. And now deficits are much, much bigger.
 
Oneuli said:
Yes. Among right-wingers, it's an article of faith that Obamacare drove up healthcare costs. Yet there are plenty of statistical sources we can use to check that idea, including the healthcare inflation statistic I cited. That real-world evidence all tells the same story: although healthcare costs continued to rise after Obamacare, they rose at a drastically lower rate than was typical before Obamacare. It appears to cause right-wingers a great deal of mental distress when the tropes they cherish run up against such facts.
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This is true for a number of reasons...preventive care, and dependent children coverage being two.

But we've never been able to see the real data, as the ACA was never allowed to exist as passed.
 
Legion said:
Due to sequestration and the government shutdown, you mean?
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Partly. If, for example, Obama had been a fiscally reckless imbecile (which is to say: a Republican), he would have agreed to make all of Bush's upper-class tax cuts permanent, rather than be willing to shut down the government over such things. His more responsible approach to budgeting made a big difference. Similarly, a Republican would have sequestered non-defense spending, but then allowed military spending to explode enough to more than make up for that, which would have meant bigger deficits. It was nice to have a good leader for eight years, wasn't it?
 
Legion said:
Yet you cannot prove it, so it doesn't meet the criteria that a fact must.
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Your semantic games don't interest me. I'm using the first definition of "fact" here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fact

Something does or does not have existence, regardless of the ability to prove it. If you want to use some home-baked definition of "fact" that means whatever you'd like it to mean, that's fine. Semantic bickering never gets us anywhere. A "fact" can be a little pink parasol if that makes you happier.
 
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