A New York Times report on the McCain and Obama health plans picked up by the News & Observer today provides terrific insight into the problems of models (economic or climate) and inadvertently also shows the value of markets:

  • Uwe Reinhardt on models – “Every econometric study is an effort in persuasion. … Depending on what I feed into the model, I get totally different answers.”
  • Sherry Glied – “We are estimating what would happen in a world we’ve never seen.”
  • Roger Feldman – “Every candidate should say that these numbers were produced by my experts and they’re my best estimates but they’re not exact.”

If only we had such humility from Al Gore and the CO2 haters.