Consumers must, for our own protection, crack down and demand the distinction between evidence of absence and absence of evidence. The distinction is simple: Evidence of absence is when, with research, there is nothing to indicate the existence of an assertion. Like the Tooth Fairy, or in Obamacare, the assertion that people could keep their plans. Fanciful, untrue and there was no evidence, even with research or the possibility of more research, there would never be evidence of its truth. This lack of evidence becomes evidence of absence. There was no evidence that was or would ever be the case. No research could be discovered, or even concocted effectively enough to overcome the evidence of absence, the simple untruth of the claim.
On the other hand, absence of evidence indicates and presumes that with more research, one might gain evidence to prove an assertion. For example, if someone asserts that Joe Biden's son used his father's contacts to make money, it is possible that is provable, there has not been enough research, including the fact that the investigation was halted.
Unlike President Trump and the Mueller Report, which based on years and millions of dollars devoted to trying to prove that President Trump is guilty of not only transgressions, but impeachable transgressions, but merely established evidence of absence, no such evidence. More research, inquiry, would not turn the claim into one of absence of evidence, that could be proved if we just spent more time and money. The evidence of absence scenario, with all their Democrat millions and minions, is becoming more evident each day.
Democrats are deliberately mislabeling their false claims as ones of absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence in order to continue to bog the US down until they get their way, and like Obama with Obamacare are attempting to manipulate processes, incorporate corruption and overreaching in order to somehow magically prove there is a Tooth Fairy, which evidence of absence tells us is not so.
If you watched the House Judiciary Committee shenanigans of Jerry Nadler, who was unable to get the votes necessary to conduct an impeachment hearing, but decided to anyway, then you got a great peek into Democratic strategy that has turned into a deceptive, corrupt and warped version of confusing absence of evidence with evidence of absence to the detriment of our government.
Dissatisfied with the result of the Mueller Report, which found no actionable misconduct, evidence of absence, Nadler and co. were already planning their next move, impeachment, no matter what. And like the unscientific, unproven accusations that resulted in the continued evidence of absence that any impeachable nefarious conduct had gone on with the President and Russia, the Dems decided to treat their unsupported hypotheses as merely an absence of evidence.
This is what is costing us endless money and time, the Democratic inability to realize that as to President Trump that there is evidence of absence rather than absence of evidence.
If there's absence of evidence, there's an implication that somehow in some way more evidence can be gleaned or discovered to support an actionable claim. Arguably, President Obama's payoff to Iran might have stimulated such an inquiry, or for that matter, Obama's Administration's handling and responsibility for the Benghazi catastrophe, or Obama's Fast and Furious gun-provision debacle, or the IRS scandal, or the Democrats' 2016 election behavior.
But the impeachment obsession with President Trump is different. The Mueller Report resulted in evidence of absence of actionable conduct. Now, the phone transcript between Donald Trump and Ukraine, publicized in part due to Democrat demands reveals the evidence of absence of actionable conduct. But instead, using their own contrived ideas, all designed to create a case for impeachment, the Dems once again, are going with the absence of evidence argument that if they keep going, they'll discover something.
While it's dismaying that this is the expensive and corrupt path our government's taking, egged-on by swaths of followers who imagine themselves as part of some group that cares about them including media, socialists, elites, whatever they're calling themselves, here it's important to note that the strategy is being used in manipulating government processes and in concocting legislation as well, and that the warnings and consequences of this flawed reasoning evident in Obama's time and Obamacare are being perpetrated again against us in the marketing of Medicare for All. It is the Obamacare example and warning that the strategy sometimes works and we get unjust and unworkable policies because we've allowed ourselves to believe claims that the Tooth Fairy is real and we overlook evidence of absence to our own detriment.
So put aside the Russia, Ukraine and the Dems' new normal and irresponsible libelous accusations placed in the exotic context of foreign fears and think about what's going on here, right in the US. 10 years ago, Obamacare promised that we'd be able to keep our health plans. It was soon apparent that this claim was impossible in the face of the evidence of absence of its truth and finally earned that Obama advertising tag-line "lie of the year" status in 2013, but it couldn't undo Obamacare.
Keeping our health plans, and its evidence of absence, it was untrue, could not be argued with an absence of evidence claim, after all, no research was going to quiet the actual experience and reality of Obamacare. So, the Administration merely struck that promise from its language and moved onto another Tooth Fairy Argument that Obamacare was the magical solution to the "problem" of the uninsured, which even after Democrat government-power changes, including the mandatory IRS penalization of people who chose not to purchase the consumer financial product of health insurance,remained untrue and left 10s of millions uninsured.
Today, the Tooth Fairy is alive and well. Elizabeth Warren is giving stump speeches on how she'll pay for everything by only taxing the richest a few pennies more, which people are gobbling up like they did her fantasy about her Native American roots and her long-time commitment to whatever values she says she has now that she didn't have as a Republican.
But claiming you'll be able to pay for an unknowable number of people (open borders, illegal immigrants), all eligible for Medicare for All that includes specific provisions, with a specific way of paying for it, is not reasonable. There is evidence of absence…More research, more numbers, cannot "prove" the impossibility of how much it will cost and how you will pay for a program for an unknowable number of people.
How about Obamacare's premise that getting the young-healthies in the mix would keep insurance rates down for everybody? This false claim was asserted endlessly IN THE EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE, year after year, and gave rise to changes in the law to make it so, yet it still didn't work. But it cost us.
First, in making the law based on this false premise, Obamacare silver plans and above provided the added government payments for cost-sharing, so not only was taxpayer money used to pay for some people's insurance premiums, the cost of getting health insurance, but it was used to pay for their cost of using health insurance (cost-sharing.)
The least expensive bronze level plans do not have cost-sharing, only premium assistance. But, because of the false premise and the evidence of absence, that young-healthies could ever be lured into spending more money on silver plans in order to lower overall rates for everyone, this added "benefit" for silver plans merely increased taxpayer costs and did not result in greater participation by the young healthies in silver plans. It never and still does not (see last year's enrollment).
Further, frantic to prove its false assertion, instead of acknowledging that like believing in the Tooth Fairy, that the assertion was made with the evidence of absence, no reality basis and there was no discoverable evidence that young people would opt-into more expensive plans just to lower costs for others, the Obama Administration decided to change their strategy to prove that there is a Tooth Fairy by changing the system to justify their Tooth Fairy evidence of absence, untrue claims.
At the end of 2015 we saw HUGE increases in the cost of bronze plans as opposed to the increases in costs of silver plans, 13 percent for bronze plans and only 7.5 percent for silver plans(See BloombergView on November 3, 2015, by Megan McArdle, “Cost of Cheapest Obamacare Plans Soaring," and "The Benchmark Silver Plan Deconstructed, Obamacare: Not Still Stupid," http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-benchmark-silver-plan-deconstructed.html).
STILL, Obama's own Administration couldn't avoid the evidence of absence, there was no more research possible or discoverable, the assertion and premise were false and impossible, as confirmed by the CBO in 2015: “…more people will forgo those subsidies by choosing to enroll in a bronze plan instead of a silver plan…[T]he agencies expect that some people purchasing coverage through exchanges solely to comply with the individual mandate will be focused on minimizing their premium payments and thus will continue to choose bronze plans." Which they have.
But because they were married to the falsehood, in spite of the evidence of absence, there were more law changes to follow to get those young-healthies to appear willing to participate in more expensive plans to cover everyone else. And so the government went after short-term limited duration plans to make them less available, to try to prove their Tooth Fairy theory:
Obama's Administration, CMS, in 2016, changed STLDI (Short Term Limited Duration Insurance) provisions stating, "Some issuers are now offering short-term limited duration plans to consumers as their primary form of health coverage for periods that last nearly 12 months, allowing them to target ONLY THE HEALTHIEST CONSUMERS while avoiding consumer protections. As highlighted in recent press accounts, BY KEEPING THESE CONSUMERS OUT OF THE ACA single risk pool, such abuses of limited duration coverage increase costs for everyone else, and they could have a greater impact over time if allowed to become more widespread." (caps added for emphasis, http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2018/09/district-of-columbia-lawsuit-may-not-be.html, "District of Columbia Lawsuit May Not be About What Consumers Think.")
This is what we face today, a failure to distinguish between absence of evidence (implication there is something discoverable given enough time, money, resources) and evidence of absence (where nothing indicates that a claim is possible or discoverable, it doesn’t exist, like the Tooth Fairy).
There is something more sinister than wordplay going on, because the Democrats in their corruption are willing to go that extra mile to willy-nilly change laws and processes, manipulate, coerce, and manufacture alleged "facts," merely to alter their claims that are evidence of absence, Tooth Fairy claims (not true or discoverable) into claims of absence of evidence, discoverable.
Further, they are willing to use their evidence of absence claims as a justification to unlawfully change, manipulate and coerce government to argue that the Tooth Fairy does exist, if we would just use a different process to prove it. Today, as articulated, Dems argue that if we had a different government, Hillary would have won. That's evidence of absence, there is no discoverable way to argue she did win, so instead they'll change the system. That's what they're trying to do regarding the electoral college.
Today we see Dems willing to stretch the limits of their authority in judiciary inquiries that are operating as un-voted for impeachment hearings, undercut the sitting President's international relations by arguing that they're "personal," undercut executive privilege, and falsely label our President in the most scandalous terms merely to try to prove something unprovable based on the massive evidence of absence.
We listen to them shoot their mouths off about the President's mental health in spite of evidence of absence, a Tooth Fairy claim. We listen to them shoot their mouths off about Russia in spite of evidence of absence, a Tooth Fairy Claim. We listen to them deny the President his rightful executive privilege and dismiss, as not yet enough, the President's willingness to waive that privilege to show them a transcript of his phone call with another head of State, and still come up with the same evidence of absence. These are some of the Tooth Fairy claims to date.
It's pathological, everyone whom Dems define as "other" is morally inferior, corrupt and unable to make sense of the world in which their Tooth Fairy is very real. Every evidence of absence is an occasion for Dems to advocate for their uneducated ideas of socialism, their twisted moralism, their tyranny. But we, as the current and ongoing pawns and victims of this inability to distinguish between absence of evidence and evidence of absence, must inform the Democrats that there is no Tooth Fairy, and enough's enough.
