Niall Ferguson doubles down on the lies, trying to defend himself

[muriel_volestrangler]

But in his defense today, Ferguson argues that he was right because he was only referring to the insurance side of the ACA. But such a claim completely up-ends his argument that Obama did not hold up his end of the bargain. You cannot factor in the insurance costs while ignoring revenue anymore than you can argue that you lost money on a beer-run because you didn't include the fact that people paid you back. (Huge hat-tip to Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal, who lays this out in much clearer terms.)

So, in order to get himself out of that predicament, Ferguson decides to edit the CBO report to satisfy his own conclusions:

If you are wondering how on earth the CBO was able to conclude that the net effect of the ACA as a whole was to reduce the projected 10-year deficit, the answer has to do with a rather heroic assumption about the way the ACA may reduce the cost of Medicare. Here’s the CBO again:

“CBO’s cost estimate for the legislation noted that it will put into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. The combination of those policies, prior law regarding payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare, and other information has led CBO to project that the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusted for overall inflation) will drop from about 4 percent per year, which it has averaged for the past two decades, to about 2 percent per year on average for the next two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved ...”

Indeed, it is, which is why I wrote what I wrote.

But Ferguson cut the CBO excerpt off mid-sentence and changed the meaning entirely. Here is how that last sentence in the excerpt actually reads:

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law.)

...
So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contibutor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/niall-fergusons-ridiculous-misleading-defense-132551.html

Ferguson's attempt to explain himself: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/20/newsweek-cover-rebuttal-paul-krugman-is-wrong.html

[hifiguy]

1. Andrew Sullivan, who considers Ferguson a friend,

tore him apart brick by brick yesterday on the Dish. It was a brutal takedown. Basically Sully called him an uninformed liar, and documented it point by point.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. We also have Ezra Klein pointing out Ferguson is admitting he wanted to mislead

The worst case against the Obama administration

The problem, as Krugman pointed out, is that the CBO and the JCT do not now say otherwise. Ferguson is simply wrong. But that’s understandable. The CBO did release a confusing report back in March 2012 in which they updated their estimates for the insurance coverage provisions of the law (which is to say, the part of the kaw that spends money) without including estimates for the revenue provisions, or the Medicare provisions, which are the parts that save money. It was easy to get confused. But if you actually read the report, it said that the Affordable Care Act was going to cut the deficit by more than the CBO initially thought, not by less.

But Ferguson says he wasn’t confused. Rather, he phrased his original comments very carefully in order to deceive his readers. You see, Ferguson specified that he was only talking about the “insurance-coverage provisions,” and so, if you happen to be an employee of the Congressional Budget Office and you’re aware of the difference between these reports, you would’ve understood that when Ferguson wrote —

The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

— that the first sentence and the second sentence had nothing to do with each other. Of course, most people are not employees of the CBO, and so they just got tricked. In the pages of Newsweek. Bummer for them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/20/the-worst-case-against-the-obama-administration/

[joeybee12]

4. Andrew Sullivan has no friends...nt

[hifiguy]

5. His husband would probably disagree.

[jsr]

3. Maybe somebody should check his academic work for lies and plagiarism

Arrogant jerk.