Pharmacy payment data and HIPAA — what your bank knows about your prescriptions

Dr.BariatricHTX said:

The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion. Ask it the other way round and the obvious answer reverses, which usually means the question is doing the work.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look. It is a small discipline and it changes what you notice.

Dr.PeteFamMed said:

I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person. Both are real; they answer different questions and get quoted as if they were the same one.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What did you change at the same time, and can you separate the two now?

Reporting back.

Update, and it is the boring outcome: nothing was wrong. The measurement I was reading had moved less than its own week-to-week variation, which somebody said upthread and I did not believe.