Last year, when it was far to early to know, our friends at the NYT breathlessly announced that the Massachusetts universal health coverage plan was “off to a good start.” Since then, virtually all of the objective data have shown the Bay State experiment to be a fiscal nightmare that has failed to accomplish its basic goals.
Rather than heeding the above cautionary tale, the Gray Lady has done it again. This time they have published a piece making very questionable assertions about San Francisco’s universal health care program. Specifically, the authors claim that the San Francisco law has had no adverse effect on employment:
As of December 2008, there was no indication that San Francisco’s employment grew more slowly after the enactment of the employer-spending requirement than did employment in surrounding areas in San Mateo and Alameda counties. If anything, employment trends were slightly better in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, as the earlier piece on Romneycare suggests, these claims should be regarded with a jaundiced eye. In reality, the authors simply do not possess enough data to draw such conclusions about the San Francisco experience. Jim Manzi provides a succinct case for skepticism:
First, a period of just less than 12 months is almost certainly not enough time to observe the effects of the labor force impacts. Second, even if we accept this time period as relevant, the measurement method they describe is not nearly sufficient to identify significant changes in employment, positive or negative, caused by this law.
This tendency to prematurely declare victory in selected battlefields of the health care war is by no means limited to the NYT. It has been done again and again in the establishment “news” media for a variety of programs favored by advocates of government-run health care.
And, somehow, it is always done at crucial points in political battles over this or that government health care program.
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