Here is a story from Reason.com about one the president’s Health Care Success Stories now claiming that can’t afford health coverage.
Obama cited the letter from the woman,
“I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed, and I haven’t had insurance for 15 years because it’s too expensive. My son has ADHD and requires regular doctor visits and his meds alone cost $250 per month. I have had an ongoing tendinitis problem due to my line of work that I haven’t had treated. Now, finally, we get to have coverage because of the ACA for $169 per month. I was crying the other day when I signed up. So much stress lifted.”
It turns out Jessica Sanford was part of a system error which gave applicants higher than allowed tax credits.
In reaction, Jessica changed her position.
Sanford, who is self-employed, tells CNN that she now plans to avoid purchasing health insurance entirely, because it’s simply not affordable on her budget.
What have we learned?
What we should have learned is that personal anecdotes are a poor metric to judge the effects of a major policy change. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone has learned that. My assessment is that before the switch, Republicans would say that the story of Jessica Sanford was an outlier, and doesn’t mean anything. After the switch, the story now proves their point. Before the switch, Democrats would say that the Jessica Sanford story proves their point. After the switch, well Jessica is probably lying to get some extra attention.
The evidence always and forever confirms what they’ve always known in the first place. This clearly illustrates how flexible intellectual discipline is – and how easy it is to shut it off when something appeals to your political beliefs. If the public didn’t eat up these anecdotal stories, politicians wouldn’t tell them.
Interestingly, this itself is an anecdote. Alone it proves nothing. But if you’re like me you see this happening in virtually every single political debate. One side is super critical of the other side, but then the facts and arguments they get from their own side they accept with exorbitant naivety.
