In research, the gold standard is to do a double-blind study in which you compare the effect of some intervention on a test group with that of a perfectly matched control group. But sometimes this is not possible, say if one is doing historical research or the conditions of the research are not amenable to being controlled by the researcher. Ethics considerations limit what one can do with animal and human subjects and if the trial might result in either group being denied a valuable benefit, such studies will be disallowed. For example, it might be valuable to know what the effect of some chemical is on infant development but it would be unthinkable to try out the experiment on test groups of infants if there is the risk of harm.

In cases such as this, researchers look for ‘natural’ experiments in which the desired experimental conditions occur naturally. Natural experiments are particularly valuable when it comes to medical research where the double-blind randomized trial is the ideal.

Such a natural experiment overcame the problem of determining definitively if Medicaid produced benefits for poor people or not. It would not have been ethical to divide the population randomly into two groups and give Medicaid benefits to one and deliberately deprive the other of them, as would have been necessary to create the appropriate protocols. As a result of this restriction, no definitive studies could be done to prove the benefits of Medicaid and thus opponents of Medicaid were able to argue that Medicaid was of no use and should be eliminated.

But in Oregon, budget woes resulted in a natural experiment occurring. Since the Oregon government had money to cover only 10,000 of the 90,000 eligible Medicaid patients, it created a lottery system in which only the winners obtained benefits, thus effectively creating a database of a large pool of subjects who could be randomized and matched in terms of other variables. Researchers seized upon this opportunity to study the effects of this difference.

Health economists and other researchers said the study was historic and would be cited for years to come, shaping health care debates.

“It’s obviously a really important paper,” said James Smith, an economist at the RAND Corporation. “It is going to be a classic.”

Richard M. Suzman, director of the behavioral and social research program at the National Institute on Aging, a major source of financing for the research, said it was “one of the most important studies that our division has funded since I’ve been at the N.I.A.,” a period of more than a quarter-century.

Researchers who used the resulting data to study the issue found in the first phase that people on Medicaid had better health outcomes than those not on it.

Those with Medicaid were 35 percent more likely to go to a clinic or see a doctor, 15 percent more likely to use prescription drugs and 30 percent more likely to be admitted to a hospital. Researchers were unable to detect a change in emergency room use.

Women with insurance were 60 percent more likely to have mammograms, and those with insurance were 20 percent more likely to have their cholesterol checked. They were 70 percent more likely to have a particular clinic or office for medical care and 55 percent more likely to have a doctor whom they usually saw.

The insured also felt better: the likelihood that they said their health was good or excellent increased by 25 percent, and they were 40 percent less likely to say that their health had worsened in the past year than those without insurance.

They benefitted in non-medical ways too.

The study found that those with insurance were 25 percent less likely to have an unpaid bill sent to a collection agency and were 40 percent less likely to borrow money or fail to pay other bills because they had to pay medical bills.

Thus being on Medicaid made people’s lives a lot less stressful.

Those who seek to deny poor people benefits in order to increase the wealth of the rich will try their best to find other reasons to do so. But this research is so definitive that it should end this particular argument.

Despite the strenuous efforts of the Obama administration to cover up torture by getting the lawsuit dismissed, a federal judge has allowed a torture suit against Donald Rumsfeld to proceed.

This is the second time a judge has allowed such a suit. Rumsfeld appealed the previous one and no doubt this will be appealed too but anything that causes these torture authorizers to sweat over the possibility of going to prison is a good thing.

I am sure that everyone is curious as to how The Undefeated is doing. On its third weekend, the number of theaters showing the film dropped from 14 to 4, resulting in gross receipts of $5,080, which I estimate works out to about an average 13 people showing up for each screening.

The total gross for the film so far is $112,078 which means that the producers are taking a financial bath but I fully expect them to recoup their investments (and more) when they release the film globally. I hear that Palin is really big in Kazakhstan because they can also see Russia from their houses.

The Onion gets it right again.

One sign of a smoothly functioning oligarchy is when everyone is so in agreement with what needs to be done that they don’t even have to discuss things.

David Corn writes about how this manifested itself in the debt ceiling vote. Despite all her public talk about how she disliked the deal, Nancy Pelosi came through for the oligarchy.

The interviewers have this weird idea that if people are really insecure about their jobs, they will work better. Damon lets them have it, but nicely. Listen to his very last words.

Matt Taibbi continues to tell it like it is about the latest deal.

The Democrats aren’t failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there’s political hay to be made moving to the right. They’re doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I’ve said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.
…
The Democrats, despite sitting in the White House, the most awesome repository of political power on the planet, didn’t fight at all. They made a show of a tussle for a good long time — as fixed fights go, you don’t see many that last into the 11th and 12th rounds, like this one did — but at the final hour, they let out a whimper and took a dive.

We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions?
…
It strains the imagination to think that the country’s smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by “surrendering” at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

Thanks to reader Vincenzo for pointing me to this post by Matt Stoller. Stoller, a Democratic party insider, even uses the term oligarchy, saying, “When you look at Obama’s governing role, he is clearly a servant of American oligarchs.”

If enough people start talking like this, Obama and the Democratic party leadership could be in real danger of their supporters seeing through their act as being people who want to do the right thing but being continually thwarted by the mean old Republicans.

In order to try and repair relations with their base, watch for them to throw them some goodies in the form of policies on social issues that the oligarchy does not care about. The recent decision by the Department of Health and Human Services, starting August 1, 2012, to “require health insurance plans to cover all government-approved contraceptives for women, without co-payments or other charges” is one such step. The repeal of the absurd “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military is another. We may even see efforts to repeal of the awful Defense of Marriage Act.

All these are very good things that should have been done long ago. But we should see them for what they are, attempts to buy the allegiance of their base while they continue to be subservient to the oligarchy.

In a post titled The myth of Obama’s “blunders” and “weakness” Glenn Greenwald tries to put to rest the excuses put forward by Obama apologists that he was forced against his will into this deal. In particular, read his email to one such apologist John Cole laying out the case

Meanwhile economist Jared Bernstein explains what is actually in the proposed deal and what is likely to happen down the road if it passes.

The political theater that is US politics is unfolding in ways that should be drearily familiar by now.

Once again, Obama and the Democratic leadership have ‘reluctantly’ and with ‘great regret’ been ‘forced’ to give up every thing they say they value because those nasty Republicans and their Tea Party caucus threatened to bring the country to ruin. They had to ‘compromise’ on what they really, really wanted to do (raise taxes on the rich and close tax loopholes) in order to ‘save the nation’.

Right.

The next phase of the drama is for the Villagers and the Very Serious People to hail this ‘bipartisan compromise’ deal that averted a supposed catastrophe. Those liberals and other Democratic supporters who are critical of the terms of the deal will either express amazement that their party’s leaders are such rotten negotiators (see Robert Reich and Paul Krugman) or urge everyone to rally round the party because the alternatives are so much worse. All the Democratic party needs to do is to raise the specter of Michele Bachmann in order to get their frightened base to fall in line and support whatever sellout plan the party proposes.

Matt Taibbi warns about another huge gift to the oligarchy, the corporate tax holiday (also known as the ‘tax repatriation holiday), that is going to be snuck into the deal somewhere along the line. Also watch for the other shoe to drop in this deal as it seems as if the ‘bipartisan commission’ that is part of the deal has been given triggers that will lead to cuts in the social welfare net in the coming year.

Oddly enough, although the Democratic party’s base should be the ones demanding that this deal be scuttled, in reality it is only the Tea Party which has the gumption to defy its party’s leadership. Of course, if they do and the deal goes down in flames, the Democratic party leadership will only use the subsequent ‘crisis’ as an opportunity to be ‘forced’ give the oligarchy even more goodies.

I am not by nature a cynical person. But when it comes to predicting how politics in the US will play out, I have found that you can’t go far wrong in picking the most cynical view to be the right one.

The debt ceiling brinkmanship is a manufactured crisis where none needs to exist. It is becoming clear that for a small but determined group within the Republican party led by the Tea Partiers, the national debt and deficit financing, rather than being simply another option in a nation’s fiscal policy, has become an obsession, a dangerous ogre that must be slain now. They are adamant about not raising the debt ceiling, and seem to think that forcing the US to default could be a good thing, because it would create chaotic conditions that could lay the groundwork for their ultimate dream, a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

But what should not be forgotten is that despite the Tea Partiers, it was always clear to me that the debt ceiling would be increased because the oligarchy wanted it and the fact that there was until yesterday still no public agreement between the two parties’ leaderships and the White House suggested to me that this so-called crisis was a purely artificial one, manufactured to advance other goals.
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