Clarification in the comments is insufficient for such important info.

I think people’s reaction in reading Robin’s statement in the most positive light possible, regardless of what the statement is, shows their biases towards Robin as an in-group figure especially towards forgiving and overlooking his own biases, foibles, or tunnel-vision.

Though to be fair to Robin, the issue isn’t whether “health care is good”, its whether or not health care at the margin is good; i.e. what sort of returns does more health care give the patient? Obviously I’d agree that most health care improves health (though this probably wasn’t true throughout most of history).

Furthermore, the difference in healthcare utilization was only 12% between the groups. But we can’t reject a difference of as much as 34% in outcomes. So, even taking the study as face value, it would be an abuse of statistics to say that they ruled out any effect from treatment. The study is fully consistent with the small difference in treatment providing a large (30%) improvement in the outcome, making your headline false.

To be precise: this study FAILS to reject the hypothesis that health care has an economically significant (i.e. 30%) effect in this situation.

If you wanted to write an accurate headline, you could say “A published study does not show that free docs help kids and also does not show that they don’t” but I guess that would hardly be worth blogging about.

“Fortune”

Indeed. Why does even Ozawa cheap out on all 8 kettledrums & 2 full-sized concert gongs? It’s the only way Orff’s lack of taste can at least acquire grandeur! As Empress of the World I deserve no less – does he really expect me to make do with only 6 kettledrums, 1 small gong, and 1 medium cymbal? C’mon everybody, weep with me.

“with tens of billions of dollars”

No way it’s gonna cost that much, Carl, which is the point. Sugar pills & grandmothers are cheap and at least do no harm. Let’s have the courage to benefit society by actually Being Hansonian. Health care appears at our current stage to be as much signaling as science. Maybe more signaling than science. Robin can weigh in on that, not I.

Fulfilling all the requisite signals seems easy to do, and would thus improve many if not most health outcomes. So why don’t we? Are we not truth seeking here or what?

Is that why his bold-face headline states this unambiguous, if ungrammatical, conclusion: “Free Docs Not Help Poor Kids”?

“…it shows their biases that more health care must be a good thing”

Uh, yes, my bias is that health care usually has an effect on health. Studies which claim otherwise are counterintuitive to most people though not to Robin (“I am, alas, not surprised”). One would expect a high powered, well designed study with clear results before making such a claim.

On the contrary, as noted, according to conventional statistical standards, this study cannot conclude that a small amount (12%) of additional health care does not improve health by as much as 34%, contrary to Robin’s misleading headline.

My prior belief before seeing study: health care probably improves health.
My updated belief after seeing study and Robin’s analysis: health care probably improves health.

student, I don’t understand why you think their excessively-pessimistic initial estimate of outcomes means we can’t conclude much from the study. Chicken-little overestimates of problems are pretty standard in this area.