Glibertarian statistics

Meegardle is certain that the central reason we libtards are happy that health care reform legislation has passed is that it makes her unhappy. Amazing how, as with so many of her libertarian friends, it really is all about her.

Also very much the libertarian is the precise ways she uses, um, percentages.

1) Conservatively, Ezra's arithmetic implies a reduction in the death rate of people between 18-64 of at 20,000-45,000 a year. Let's take the low bound--20,000 deaths a year--and assume that we should see that, or something close to it, by 2020. That's about 3% of deaths in the relevant age group, which would show up as a very noticeably kink in the death rate. For comparison purposes, the entire fall in mortality between 1980 and 2000 was about 2.7%.

Contra Ezra, I am predicting that this will not happen. I'm about 75% confident that you will not be able to discern any effect from the health care reform among the statistical noise. But I am 95+% confident that the effect will not be as large as 3%.

The precision is breathtaking, as is the basis on those "predictions." Show your work, if you have any.