Comment by strictnein
2 days ago
> ACA has saved tons of lives
It was the Medicaid expansion that has been cited as saving lives [0]. An expansion that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the ACA.
> "There's a very clear type of fallacy you are engaging ... There's no intellectual rigor or honesty in that sort of thinking"
So you're claiming that the person who posted that is not only falling into a fallacy, but they are neither intellectually rigorous or honest? I think you're reading a lot into their comment which seemed pretty benign, but possibly contrary to your viewpoint?
[0] https://news.uchicago.edu/story/new-research-shows-medicaid-...
Your linked to article does not demonstrate what you claim it does. Your reasoning is wrong.
Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.
> Medicaid expansion was a big part of the ACA.
Well see, first you narrowly define the ACA to be "everything that didn't help"...
> "Findings suggest Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act saved about 27,400 lives between 2010-22, including among younger adults."
> "Their findings show that Medicaid expansions led to a 12% increase in enrollment and significantly reduced mortality—not just among older adults, but also younger ones, who accounted for nearly half of the life-years saved."
Huh? Did you read it? My point was that we could have just expanded Medicaid to achieve this.
It was the Medicaid expansion that has been cited as saving lives [0].
Medicaid expansion saved lives. That is true and not in dispute. Other lives were saved too. It wasn’t just poor people who obtained life saving care from ACA. In an alternate world where only Medicaid expansion occurred fewer lives would have been saved than were saved with ACA as it exists now.
> we could have just expanded Medicaid
Laws need votes.
If we are going to be unbound by reality then we could "just" put a medbed to cure all diseases, reverse ageing, and regrow limbs using quantum space-age tech in everyone's home.
3 replies →
Paid for how? The expansion of people not on medicaid to be paying in was supposed to be how expanding medicaid could be achieved.
2 replies →
> An expansion that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the ACA.
That's a very strange assertion, it's literally "the ACA medicaid expansion" and was a key part of the whole thing.
I'm saying most political argumentation is dishonest and not intellectually rigorous, and that's what the comment was doing. It wasn't arguing based on facts or data or actual specifics, but rather according to vague political ideologies.
That's one reason that I believe politics are discouraged on HN. It turns off our brains and we start using less interesting or useful ways of thinking.
"Saved lives" or "Could Save Lives" is a ridiculous, un-falsifiable, and unprovable claim.
First, it involves twisting correlation and causation into an Escher knot. Secondly, it's not even what cited source says.
Yes, "reduced mortality along a timeline for a certain demographic" is a good and desirable statistic, but there is no way that it translates into the self-aggrandizing and sensationalistic "ACA/Medicaid saved tons of lives" (whatever "tons" is supposed to mean, in terms of lives. Perhaps grossly obese people died less.)
> "Saved lives" or "Could Save Lives" is a ridiculous, un-falsifiable, and unprovable claim.
Just because you don't understand statistics doesn't mean the claim is ridiculous. You have a pattern of assuming that your rather poor understanding of the world is the ground truth, but it just isn't. People who actually understand statistics and medicine are the ones making the claim, you're just standing here crying "nuh uh" because you disagree with the conclusions but your opinion doesn't mean shit without some backing evidence, which you have consistently failed to provide.
You really owe this forum better, if you want to participate here.