2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[Byrthnoth]

I didn't ask him that, but he got one(insurer) through Obamacare since he said that was he was using one until the bill jumped. He is still getting treatment, and got a nice fundraiser going. My dad will make it.

He is kind of in a bad spot though(this all bad timing, he found out 8 months ago that he had it. Prostate Cancer typically shows no signs til stage 4). He's 1. Trying to get disability. 2. Not old enough for retirement. 3. Not old enough for Social Security. I don't know if he can get medicaid. He's still having to work.

Not trying to gain any sympathy here(though it would be a big lie to say I'm not worried), my point is that while it may be cheaper through Obamacare, these insurers did not expect it would draw a lot of really ill folks, hence they are having to cover large bills and can't hack it.

Not to be a downer, but:

~80% of prostate cancers are found in Stage I/II. Non-metastatic prostate cancer 5 year relative survival rate is ~100%.

If his stage IV is metastatic, you should be spending as much time with him as you care to.

anyways the latest, and likely last, batch of major national polls show Hillary's descent ending and her numbers stabilized at around +2. when you consider the expanded electorate, her superior voter turnout ground game, and the greater margins baked into the final tallies with early voting that occurred when her lead was wider it appears our gal is headed to victory, unless there is major and unidentified voter shift over the next 48 hours.

...or some systematic bias that's not detected by polling, like voter booth sexism.

[Andalusian girls]

it should go without saying that polls, while being the single best predictor of electoral contests, are not inerrable (ergo the qualifier 'appears') but is voter booth sexism really what we're going with if Trump overperforms his polling

for what it's worth i hedge a slightly greater probability on him underperforming his polling numbers than overperforming them, given the difficulty pollsters have in reaching, and therefore accounting for, the increasing numbers of Hispanic voters and the advantages Hillary will have in get out the vote efforts on election day

[Byrthnoth]

For a small margin where he fails to win the popular vote but squeezes out an electoral college victory, I'd say it could be polling bias, weather/etc. causing lower-than-expected turnout affecting who the "probable voter" is, and so forth.

If he wins the popular vote, what would you suggest? Voter fraud? (lol)

[Andalusian girls]

the same issue that accompanies most all inaccurate polling, non-representative sampling. Hispanics don't turn out in the numbers predicted, youth + black + black youth turnout is depressed relative to the past few cycles, impassioned non-college educated whites increase their proportion of the electorate, et cetera.

in 2012 the final RCP aggregate had Obama up by 0.7% when his actual victory would be by 3.9%, a miss of 2-3% is anamolous but not unheard of, or perhaps there was undetected voter booth anti-Mormonism

[6souls]

At Trump's rally in Reno, he said that Hillary is cheating by having celebs such as Beyonce, Jay Z, & Stevie Wonder make appearances at her events. Trump on the other hand has Scott Baio & Dennis Rodman as two of his most vocal celebrity endorsements.

[kisada]

anyways the latest, and likely last, batch of major national polls show Hillary's descent ending and her numbers stabilized at around +2. when you consider the expanded electorate, her superior voter turnout ground game, and the greater margins baked into the final tallies with early voting that occurred when her lead was wider it appears our gal is headed to victory, unless there is major and unidentified voter shift over the next 48 hours.

i do worry if the increase in early voting simply means the cannibalization of in-person voting. and i do have a few other concerns as well, but the general structural advantages really seem like they're gonna make all the difference in the world.

if the GOP loses then any future candidates can look at this election as exhibit A on why you need to have an efficient, functioning campaign at peak levels.

[ringthree]

I don't know... if he has a strong Tuesday he could keep it close. But yes, if the trend continues NV is going to be a landslide for Democrats.

Whatever happens, a lot of people are going to be incredibly wrong on Tuesday, including possibly Nate Silver.

How would nate be wrong?

[ringthree]

Not to be a downer, but:

~80% of prostate cancers are found in Stage I/II. Non-metastatic prostate cancer 5 year relative survival rate is ~100%.

If his stage IV is metastatic, you should be spending as much time with him as you care to.



...or some systematic bias that's not detected by polling, like voter booth sexism.

Bradley effect has pretty much been disproven. Also there would be just as much of a chance of the reverse happening.

[ringthree]

the same issue that accompanies most all inaccurate polling, non-representative sampling. Hispanics don't turn out in the numbers predicted, youth + black + black youth turnout is depressed relative to the past few cycles, impassioned non-college educated whites increase their proportion of the electorate, et cetera.

in 2012 the final RCP aggregate had Obama up by 0.7% when his actual victory would be by 3.9%, a miss of 2-3% is anamolous but not unheard of, or perhaps there was undetected voter booth anti-Mormonism

RCP is great for trend lines, but really bad for aggregates.

[Aerin]

They need to find a better way to get young people to sign up, so the companies have that pool of "invincibles." Unfortunately, a lot are just choosing to go with the fine instead, which makes premiums higher, which makes them less likely to sign up, and on and on we go.

Throwing out more quotes (probably the last time), will put in spoilers so it's not a wall of text.

Spoiler: show

In regards to the healthcare business

Still, by 2009, most insurance companies were relative slackers in the healthcare ecosystem. Their tight profit margins were dwarfed by those of the drug companies, the device makers, and even the purportedly nonprofit hospitals.

That was because even in noncompetitive markets, insurers had to buy products from suppliers - hospitals, device makers, drug companies - that had been able in the past two decades to raise their prices with abandon.

That's not to say that the big insurers are managed well or that they haven't reacted to the corner they have been forced into by taking it out on their customers. But it does mean they are the only industry players who, however unsympathetic, are on the customer and tax-payer side of the divide. Like us, they buy healthcare.

No new taxes on middle class for ACA

... [Senator] Baucus had included a tax on employer-paid health insurance that was the largest single contributor (worth as much as $300 billion over ten years) to the new revenues his plan projected in order to achieve budget neutrality.

...

The numbers had been tempting, but by the summer the policy and political teams had prevailed. Obama had attacked the idea on the campaign trail and promised not to raise any taxes on the middle class at all. He was not going to go back on that.

Here's one example of the chain of money, spoilered again for length and it is long but there's a lot there.

Spoiler: show

[On July 13, 2011] An eighty-eight-year-old man whom I'll call Alan A. collapsed from a massive heart attack at his home outside Philadelphia. He survived and spent two weeks in the intensive care unit of Virtua Marlton Hospital. Virtua Marlton was part of a four-hospital nonprofit chain that, in its 2010 federal filing, had reported gross revenue of $633.7 million and an operating profit of $91 million. Alan then spent three weeks at a nearby convalescent care center.

...

Medicare made quick work of Alan's $268,227 in chargemaster bills from the hospital and convalescent center, paying just $43,320. Except for $100 in incidental expenses, Alan paid nothing because 100 percent of inpatient hospital care is covered by Medicare.

The ManorCare convalescent center, which Alan later told me gave him "good care" in an "OK but not luxurious room," got paid $11,982 by Medicare for his three-week stay. That amounts to about $571 a day for all of Alan's physical therapy, lab tests, and other services. As with all hospitals in nonemergency situations, ManorCare did not have to accept Medicare patients and their discounted rates. But it did accept them. In fact, it welcomed them and encouraged doctors to refer them.

Healthcare providers may grouse about Medicare's fee schedules, which they claim they lose money on. But Medicare's payments must have been producing a profit for ManorCare. It was part of a for-profit chain owned by Carlyle Group, a blue-chip private-equity firm.

About a decade before his July 2011 heart attack Alan had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma ... Through a family friend, he got an appointment with one of the lymphoma specialists at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York ... A decade later, Alan was still in remission, traveling up to Sloan Kettering every six weeks to be examined by the doctor who saved his life and to get a transfusion of Flebogamma, a drug that bucks up the immune system.

With some minor variations each time, Sloan Kettering's typical bill for each visit was the same as or similar to the $7,346 bill he received during his visit there in the summer of 2011. It included $340 for a session with the doctor. His actual out of pocket cost for each session was a fraction of that ... $50.

...

Not counting the doctor's separate $340 bill, Sloan Kettering's bill for the transfusion was $7,006. In addition to a few hundred dollars in miscellaneous items, the two basic Sloan Kettering charges were $414 per hour for five hours of the nurse's time for administering the Flebogamma and a $4,615 charge for the Flebogamma.

According to Alan, the nurse generally handled three or four patients at a time. That would mean Sloan Kettering was billing more than $1,200 an hour for that nurse. When I asked Paul Nelson, Sloan Kettering's director of financial planning, he explained that 15 percent of these charges was meant to cover overhead and indirect expenses, 20 percent was meant to be profit that would cover discounts for Medicare or Medicaid patients, and 65 percent covered direct expenses. [That's still $800 an hour for the nurse].

...

Bottom line: Sloan Kettering got paid $302 by Medicare for about $2,400 worth of its chargemaster charges, and Alan ended up paying $6.

...

A Grifols spokesman would not discuss what is cost Grifols to produce and ship Alan's dose [of Flebogamma]. But he did say that the average production for its bioscience prodcuts, Felbogamma included, was approximately 55 percent of what it sells them for. However, a doctor familiar with the economics of cancer care drugs told me that plasma products typically have some of the industry's higher profit margins. He estimated that the Flebogamma dose for Alan - which Sloan Kettering seemed to have bought from Grifols for $1,400 to $1,600 and sold to Medicare for $2,123 [Medicare pays for drugs what the average sales price is for the drug company, plus 6%]- can't cost more than $200 or $300 to collect, process, test, and ship. That would be a 460 to 800 percent markup.

[Tyche]

How would nate be wrong?

Because Nate has the race entirely too close. And he's pretty butt hurt about it. His twitter tantrum last night was remarkable. But if Clinton goes on to win Florida by 4 points, NC by 5-6, and Nevada by 5+, Nate is going to justifiably have a lot of egg on his face.

[TheDirtyHobo]

At Trump's rally in Reno, he said that Hillary is cheating by having celebs such as Beyonce, Jay Z, & Stevie Wonder make appearances at her events. Trump on the other hand has Scott Baio & Dennis Rodman as two of his most vocal celebrity endorsements.

Obviously Hillary is cheating by having Dennis Rodman support Trump.

[Andalusian girls]

i think anyone that thinks Nate would have egg on his face has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bayesian probability upon which his models are based. it's kind of amazing he's giving Hillary a 2:1 probability of winning and showing her winning 350 EC votes is as likely as Trump winning a bare majority, and yet he's going to be regarded as a failure if she wins by too much.

the twitter rampage came from a journalist fundamentally misunderstanding the simplest of statistical techniques in a regression analysis and claiming it constituted Nate putting his finger on the scales in an act of ascientifc punditry. in a related aside the lead article at the Atlantic is running a piece where the author claims quantum mechanics demonstrates observer-independent particles are an illusion. journalism would be great except for all the journalists.

[kisada]

i think anyone that thinks Nate would have egg on his face has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bayesian probability upon which his models are based. it's kind of amazing he's giving Hillary a 2:1 probability of winning and showing her winning by 350 EC votes is as likely as Trump winning a bare majority, and yet he's going to be regarded as a failure if she wins by too much.

the twitter rampage came from a journalist fundamentally misunderstanding the simplest of statistical techniques in a regression analysis and claiming it constituted Nate putting his finger on the scales in an act of ascientifc punditry. in a related aside the lead article at the Atlantic is running a piece where the authors claims quantum mechanics demonstrates observer-independent particles are an illusion. journalism would be great except for all the journalists.

^

[Tyche]

i think anyone that thinks Nate would have egg on his face has a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bayesian probability upon which his models are based. it's kind of amazing he's giving Hillary a 2:1 probability of winning and showing her winning by 350 EC votes is as likely as Trump winning a bare majority, and yet he's going to be regarded as a failure if she wins by too much.

the twitter rampage came from a journalist fundamentally misunderstanding the simplest of statistical techniques in a regression analysis and claiming it constituted Nate putting his finger on the scales in an act of ascientifc punditry. in a related aside the lead article at the Atlantic is running a piece where the authors claims quantum mechanics demonstrates observer-independent particles are an illusion. journalism would be great except for all the journalists.

There's Bayesian probability models that give Hillary a much higher chance. A fundamental understanding of Bayesian statistics isn't at issue, it's how it's applied with poll weighting, assumptions, historical data, et al the other baked in model assumptions.

[Andalusian girls]

A fundamental understanding of Bayesian statistics isn't at issue

it was for the huffingtonpost author who claimed 538's trendline adjustment was punditry dressed up as math. but you are right there is a divergence of opinion among Bayesians over how likely she is to win, even as all agree she should win more often than not. i just don't see how an accurate prediction from Nate constitutes failure unless his margins are horribly askew and she wins by 10, and even then the failure would be in the polling more than anyone's model.

[Tyche]

it was for the huffingtonpost author who claimed 538's trendline adjustment was punditry dressed up as math.

I agree with that. I don't think it's punditry. I don't think 538 has some nefarious plot to adjust polling data to make it look closer. .

[Tyche]

One thing that does aggravate me about Nate though is he's like a fucking four year old when people criticize him, but he shits on other media constantly. I remember when his book came out and a ton of experts heavily criticized his climate change section (rightfully so), he got incredibly defensive.

[kisada]

you don't think he's right to? i'd react the same way if someone came after my integrity like that after i'd spent all my time trying to create the most objective model possible

this is what the guy accused him of: "The short version is that Silver is changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them."

and also: "He may end up being right, but he’s just guessing. A “trend line adjustment” is merely political punditry dressed up as sophisticated mathematical modeling."

i mean, that's some fucking bullshit right there.

[Aerin]

FBI says they've reviewed the new emails and it didn't change their position on Clinton.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/06/politi...ons/index.html