Goldman Sachs Concludes Obamacare Added 500k Jobs

[Belsnickel]

(04-22-2017, 07:29 PM)THE Bigzoman Wrote: Your explanation was fine. I'm not t too behind you. I stopped after a masters course in cost-benefit analysis; the kind that uses the NPV to determine whether or not we should do a public project.

I don't disagree that there are other things at play driving up health care costs. I'm not surprised that it's hard to observe, isolate, and quantify theses variables in a regression set.

But that isn't grounds to dismiss the idea that the rise in demand is a contributing factor to rising costs.

I wouldn't say it is grounds to dismiss, but papers in the social sciences tend to follow a trend like what I described. They at every hesitant to call causation on things like that when there isn't a firm ground in the statistics. A contributing factor? Sure, I would easily agree that it is, but finding a paper that says that definitively may be difficult.

Also, the class you describe was likely in the realm of policy analysis. I've taken some of those courses, but am just more of a fan of coming in after a policy is in place rather than estimating effects before hand.