NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - During a four-year experiment that offered the women of St. Louis, Missouri, free contraceptives - including expensive long-term implants - rates of teen pregnancy and repeat abortions in the area dropped dramatically, according to a new study.

Researchers say the project, begun in 2007, was intended to model the likely benefits of mandatory insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act.

"We believe that this is a major step to reducing unintended pregnancy in the United States," said lead author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis....

Nate DOES have a lot riding on the outcome of this election. What I don't understand is why nobody else seems to. Gallup, RCP, PPP, Rasmussen, all those talking heads... you know those guys are all still going to be on top of the mountain no matter how wrong they get things. Only Nate seems to be in any danger.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - During a four-year experiment that offered the women of St. Louis, Missouri, free contraceptives - including expensive long-term implants - rates of teen pregnancy and repeat abortions in the area dropped dramatically, according to a new study.

This creates the problems you specify without solving the problem you want it to. If you increase the House to 2,000 from 435, then you decrease the number of people represented by a Representative from about 700,000 to 150,000. I don't think that a guy representing 150K people has any "fighting chance to actually know" his constituents.

To actually create such a "fighting chance," you'd probably need to make it, say, 10,000. Which is... silly.

What will be real interesting is that there's increasing buzz that Pelosi may step aside...

Nate DOES have a lot riding on the outcome of this election. What I don't understand is why nobody else seems to. Gallup, RCP, PPP, Rasmussen, all those talking heads... you know those guys are all still going to be on top of the mountain no matter how wrong they get things. Only Nate seems to be in any danger.

What's a train? You are so last millennium?

Nate is not a pollster. Those companies provide a service which produces data. Nate provides analysis of that data. If his analysis is wrong, he's not providing anything at all.

There's no evidence that knowledge of, or availability of, contraception has any effect on "unwanted pregnancy." (That is, women who get pregnant unintentionally do not list inability to obtain contraception as a reason.)

Virginia is the only state that figures to be interesting for President - an Obama win puts Romney in really bad shape and makes Ohio an absolute necessity. Neither VT or SC figure to have much of interest to tell us.

And if it's not clear, this is what I think will happen when they frack into northern New York's exemplary aquifer.

In June, the New York Times reported that Cuomo was prepared to allow fracking in a few counties along the Pennsylvania border where the gas is richest and the resistance weakest. His administration denies that it has reached any decision.

Nationally, the anti-fracking movement’s gains have been incremental—a major environmental study and a series of more restrictive rules on the federal level and regulatory overhauls in several states (those that have banned the practice do not have extensive gas reserves). A decision by Cuomo to ban fracking would be momentous. A decision to maintain a moratorium pending yet further review, less so—although an increasingly restive anti-fracking movement is unlikely to let any review process pass quietly. For those living above the shale, the stakes could not be higher. “It’s one of those decisions,” McKibben said, “that will be recorded in geologic time.”

It was a CDC study, and found that only 13% of teens who got pregnant listed trouble getting contraception as the reason -- even though that would have been the most socially acceptable answer.

Wait--your individual candidates are going to have to make their positions known, right? We'll call you the Good Government Party for the moment. Once the GGP candidate in Missouri mentions he's pro-choice, he's running for what are now Democratic votes. How does he get elected?

I like your idea, but I just don't see how your candidate is fighting for anything other than half the votes. I don't see paths to victory.

I'd actually have a tough time responding to such a poll question myself... I think federal income tax rates are too low, but I think an awful lot of 'fees' that nickel and dime us in the masses are out of hand.



Now, that's a smart observation. And what's the cost for administering and enforcing all that picayune stuff?

Nate DOES have a lot riding on the outcome of this election. What I don't understand is why nobody else seems to. Gallup, RCP, PPP, Rasmussen, all those talking heads... you know those guys are all still going to be on top of the mountain no matter how wrong they get things. Only Nate seems to be in any danger.

To actually create such a "fighting chance," you'd probably need to make it, say, 10,000. Which is... silly.

It was a CDC study, and found that only 13% of teens who got pregnant listed trouble getting contraception as the reason -- even though that would have been the most socially acceptable answer.

Nate is not a pollster. Those companies provide a service which produces data. Nate provides analysis of that data. If his analysis is wrong, he's not providing anything at all.

I don't even think it's even that complicated. Anytime he sees a perceived "liberal" post something, he simply reaches for his teleprompter and fires away.

If Nate's analysis is "wrong", and if he's basing his analysis in great part on those polls, while it's true that he'd have egg on his face for relying on their faulty data, I'm not sure just how the pollsters can at the same time walk away unscathed themselves.

"Many doctors and nurse practitioners are reluctant to use IUDs in women who are at risk for infection. They also fear it can cause infertility. Many of these are myths we need to get past," Peipert told Reuters Health.

To address such barriers to access, and to promote long-acting contraceptive methods, Peipert and his colleagues set up the Contraceptive CHOICE Project, with funding from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, in St. Louis.

Between 2007 and 2011, a total of 9,256 women enrolled and were offered any FDA-approved contraceptive they wanted after counseling about the various choices, their effectiveness, risks and benefits.

The researchers also educated doctors and nurses in the program about long-acting birth control, and urged them to encourage women to opt for these methods.

Among the women who participated in the project, 63 percent had previously had an unintended pregnancy and 41 percent had had an abortion.

Most women - 75 percent - chose a long-acting method of contraception.

Overall, abortions, repeat abortions and teen pregnancies all dropped in St. Louis while rates elsewhere in Missouri remained stable, Peipert's team found.

From 2008 to 2010, for instance, the number of abortions in the St. Louis metropolitan area declined by 20 percent, while the rate of abortions in the rest of Missouri remained unchanged.

Similarly, in St. Louis the proportion of abortions requested by women who had had one previously fell from 47 percent in 2006 to 39 percent in 2010.

In comparison, repeat abortions in Kansas City, Missouri, rose from 46 percent to 51 percent during the same time period.

Peipert's group also found that rates of teen pregnancy were substantially lower among girls participating in the project. Among teen girls aged 15 to 19 enrolled in Contraceptive CHOICE, the number of pregnancies translated to a rate of 6.3 per 1,000. That compares to the national average for 15-19 year-olds of 34 out of every 1,000 girls.

The study cannot prove that improved access to birth control caused the drop in abortions and teen pregnancies.

But Peipert said he hopes that with the insurance coverage changes for birth control under the Affordable Care Act, long-acting contraceptives will become more accessible to women.

The healthcare law requires insurance companies to offer birth control without co-pays. Some women may have already seen this change to their benefits, but others will have to wait until their new insurance plan year.

"It is possible for us, with our current medical knowledge and evidence and clinical services, to address the unintended pregnancy rate in the U.S.," said Cynthia Harper, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

Harper said that the program's focus not only on cost barriers but information barriers among health care providers and women made it successful.

In particular, women were counseled on the effectiveness of each birth control method, an approach Harper said isn't always taken in the doctor's office.

"Patient education is important, and women don't have a very good sense of the effectiveness of contraception," she told Reuters Health.

"The unintended pregnancy rate has been high for decades, and this shows we can make progress and it's not beyond our grasp," said Harper.

Neither is Real Clear Politics. Yet their reputation is somehow not at stake.

Nate DOES have a lot riding on the outcome of this election. What I don't understand is why nobody else seems to. Gallup, RCP, PPP, Rasmussen, all those talking heads... you know those guys are all still going to be on top of the mountain no matter how wrong they get things. Only Nate seems to be in any danger.

Nate is not a pollster. Those companies provide a service which produces data. Nate provides analysis of that data. If his analysis is wrong, he's not providing anything at all.

He is telling us that despite whatever flaws there are in the polling, he can nevertheless rely on the data to a large extent - and can model the data to come up with an accurate prediction.

What will be real interesting is that there's increasing buzz that Pelosi may step aside...



That'd be a shame. She's a good wartime consigliere.

Not silly at all! It's the heart of my ideal reform. You divide every state into districts of 10,000 people, each elects a representative every two (or four) years, and then you select 435 (or however many), from that number ... by lot. Poof, you have your House of Representatives.

The rest are assigned to their state legislature and possibly other elective offices (county boards, parole boards, etc) by lot as well.

Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the doge. None could be elected but by at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors.

As far as generated value is concerned, is there a significant gap between a provider of inaccurate data and a provider of nothing at all?

To actually create such a "fighting chance," you'd probably need to make it, say, 10,000. Which is... silly.

Not silly at all! It's the heart of my ideal reform. You divide every state into districts of 10,000 people, each elects a representative every two (or four) years, and then you select 435 (or however many), from that number ... by lot. Poof, you have your House of Representatives.

The rest are assigned to their state legislature and possibly other elective offices (county boards, parole boards, etc) by lot as well.

It's the punditocracy that I wish would take a big hit....

state licensing boards are bogus. the nation would be a lot better if we reduced the licensing burden on individual businesses.

If #1947 is Obama's second-term agenda, he's done a fine job of hiding it. For the past six months, Obama's second-term agenda has been, "Mitt Romney is really, really scary! And also, Mitt Romney is really, really scary!"

He's talking about the likeliness of certain outcomes. He's not saying definitely what will or won't happen. I'm not amazed that the mainstream discussion on Silver continues to not appreciate the difference, but I am amazed that some people here are doing the same.

It's the punditocracy that I wish would take a big hit....



This is, IMO, a lot of what's riding on Nate's accuracy. I understand that the right-leaners on this board don't like the predictions Nate's turning out, but I'm not sure what part of his systemic critique of the MSM pundit class they could possibly disagree with. If Nate's right, which I get is bad news for their side, hopefully his critique will gain more traction. Probably not, but we can hope. It'll certainly get more airtime. The SABR stuff steered mainstream conversations about baseball in a better direction; Nate is trying to do something similar here by calling the popular press out for being nothing more than a distraction engine. The downside, of course, is that it feeds this abominable trend of horserace coverage, but that wasn't going away anytime soon, with or without Nate's intervention.

The other thing is that with a district every 10K people, California is going to have close to 3,800 districts and the country as a whole will have about 31,000. That's just way too many.

Neither is Real Clear Politics. Yet their reputation is somehow not at stake.

Nate is not a pollster. Those companies provide a service which produces data. Nate provides analysis of that data. If his analysis is wrong, he's not providing anything at all.

RCP is not claiming to know anything

That depends what you mean by "inaccurate data." If the data is simply throwing darts at a dartboard such that it's complete garbage, then no, there's no gap. If the data is inaccurate because it makes certain assumptions and we can strip apart those assumptions and analyze it, then yes, there's a significant gap.

I don't follow these things as closely as many here, but I thought RCP just did a straight average of the polls that came out. They don't attempt to analyze the data; they just say, "Here's all the polls." It's the difference between BPro and BBref.

*ducks* (I'm an Obama supporter!)

Have we ever had an election where both Presidential candidates failed to win their home state? Mitt Romney is down some 20 points in Massachusetts, and of course, Kenya is not allowed to vote for our President. *ducks*

If he relies on data that turns out not to have predicted the reality that came about, how's that his fault?

I don't follow these things as closely as many here, but I thought RCP just did a straight average of the polls that came out. They don't attempt to analyze the data; they just say, "Here's all the polls." It's the difference between BPro and BBref.



They exclude some polls (for various reasons that some people consider rational and some people consider slightly partisan). It's not that big of a deal, but it effects things at the margins.

So if the guy I vote for gets sent to Congress then I don't have a state legislator?

The other thing is that with a district every 10K people, California is going to have close to 3,800 districts and the country as a whole will have about 31,000. That's just way too many. EDIT: There are about 3200 counties in the US. Counties vary wildly in population and size, but still, 10 people elected per county is a bit much.

state licensing boards are bogus. the nation would be a lot better if we reduced the licensing burden on individual businesses.

This is actually a Democrat position. Why do we require licences for beauticians again?

It would be nice if it were a Democrat position, but it isn't.

In fairness to said right leaners, if Nate's right, it's bad news for the pundit class generally, regardless of party. The Chris Cillizas of the world have been pushing the dead heat meme that is just as contradicted by Silver's analysis as Michael Barone's Romney landslide prediction.

i hear the concern about legalization but again, we have tried all the other stuff and it's just costly and we have lots of folks in prison learning to be better criminals. i think we have to explore the alternative some how some way.

It would be nice if it were a Democrat position, but it isn't. (Look at the hate mail Matt Yglesias gets -- from the left -- when he suggests that perhaps barbers need not be licensed.)

But this *is* the OT thread about *politics,* and politically Nate Silver can't go wide with his model (via the NYT, his increasingly confident-bordering-on-arrogant Twitter posts, national cable television appearances) and then complain that the masses he's courting (in order to push his personal brand and move into the stratosphere of the pundit class himself) don't really understand the nuance of his model.

That's true. All I'm saying is that however bad it is now, it might get worse with legalization. For instance, most crime is committed under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol or by addicts/alcoholics. Increasing addiction is going to do what?

Will grass be a commercial product? Will we see Marlboro Highs? What are the advertising rules--if any? Are there constitutional implications with regulating commercial speech wrt the grass business? How will protocols change wrt DUI's? Does any state really check for DUIs wrt anything but alcohol? How will that change?

How about lawsuits? Will FDA regulate? How?

This is just off the top of my head. Legalization just may be a Pandora's Box?

It's a pretty standard "New Democrat" position that state licensing is overly onerous.

In fairness to said right leaners, if Nate's right, it's bad news for the pundit class generally, regardless of party.

I think the best advantage of my plan is that running would be within the means of just about anybody who wanted. No need for multi-million dollar campaigns.

In fairness to said right leaners, if Nate's right, it's bad news for the pundit class generally, regardless of party. The Chris Cillizas of the world have been pushing the dead heat meme that is just as contradicted by Silver's analysis as Michael Barone's Romney landslide prediction.

Under the scenario we were discussing, the data is (implicitly) inaccurate enough that it blew up all the poll aggregators' models. Which would seem to lean more toward the former scenario, rather than the latter, since if it were capable of being stripped, analyzed, and cleaned into a useful form, the poll aggregators would already be doing that.

but certainly some form of tax will generate some amount of revenue

There is a distinction between discussions of what is and discussions of what ought to be. Most everyone outside of the Kehoskieite fringes recognize what Nate is doing and the distinction between his forecasting model and outright claims of certainty.

Of course, then we run into --- what exactly are the cable nets going to do for 10-12 months every couple years? They might actually start, you know, reporting on policy, issues, and such... the horror... the horror...

But if the polls are misleading or wrong, that's worse than just bad analysis. If the polling companies are collecting and distributing bad data, that's far more damaging than anything Nate could do on his own.

Yet nobody is uncomfortable with the bulletproof nature of those companies. It's all just Nate.

we had prohibition for a decade or so. social experiment failed. oh well

Prohibition was successful at changing drinking habits from hard liquor to beer.

Absolutely. I'm speaking specifically to people on this board, who seem to be rooting for Nate to fail because they need Nate to fail to get a Romney victory. Which is understandable, but also doesn't help make media coverage of politics any better. I don't think Nate provides us with much of a solution on this front, as much as he does correctly identify the problem.

One thing I don't share with Nate, BTW, is his quarrel with the pundits. Most of them are fairly predictable, but when they get outside the realm of trying to make precise predictions and put their partisanship aside, they're more than capable of contributing insight to specific races. AFAIC Barone the opinionator is a complete blowhard, but Barone the walking encyclopedia of congressional districts is a national resource. Those are not contradictory statements.

He privatizes the glory and socializes the blame. Where have we heard that before?

In fairness to the "horse race" opinionators, it's true that a small shift of votes in the swing states---within the margin of error, but all in the same direction, and that's the catch---could make Romney a winner. But that possibility is factored into that 85% number, and it's why that number isn't 99% instead.

Nate has told us that the 15% accounts for faulty polls. So Obama really should win this thing; Nate is 85% certain of that. But if Michael Barone pegs the election instead, Nate takes a nuclear-level hit. Because it means that Nate probably seriously underestimated the effect of poll bias.

I guess I'm still not seeing this. If I roll a die and claim there's a 16% chance it's NOT a six, and then a six comes up, have I seriously underestimated the fairness of the die?

Part of the problem is that we'll never know, because there's only one "roll" here. With a die, you roll it 20 times or whatever and if a six comes up in 10 of them, you know your die is not a fair die.

With a Romney win, Nate has to say "I have a fair six-sided die and it came up 6." But how does he show that he had a fair six-sided die? That's the serious problem he would have. Why should we believe him, just because he says it's so?

No matter how much Nate might be a stats wiz, it's tough to trust someone as a down-the-middle analyst when we know he has a rooting interest. There are a lot of ways Nate can be wrong without being biased, but I also don't believe a partisan can craft a truly bias-free model in the first place.)

Part of the problem is that we'll never know, because there's only one "roll" here. With a die, you roll it 20 times or whatever and if a six comes up in 10 of them, you know your die is not a fair die.

With a Romney win, Nate has to say "I have a fair six-sided die and it came up 6." But how does he show that he had a fair six-sided die? That's the serious problem he would have. Why should we believe him, just because he says it's so?

There's a focus on "inside" information over accurate information.

Um, no. If his model is right then it is right. If his model is wrong there will be reasons for it to be wrong. Or are you arguing that if the model is wrong he is a moron?