Yesterday, as I trudged through the airport, I saw a copy of Time on a magazine rack. When I noticed the title of the cover story, “The Sorry State of American Health Care,” I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a copy.
Predictably, the article was just a recitation of the same old tired arguments and phony statistics repeated over and over (and over) by the advocates of government-run health care.
The phony stats parroted in the piece include our old friend infant mortality. As I pointed out a few days ago, infant mortality rates tell us nothing about a nation’s health care system, but Time doesn’t care about that:
In 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, about 7 babies out of every 1,000 live births in the U.S. died before their first birthday.
The piece admits that this represents another incremental gain in a century of progress, but then adds a black cloud to the silver lining by repeating the following faux-stat from the OECD:
But globally, it still places us 29th in the world, behind Cuba and Singapore and on a par with Poland and Slovakia.
The piece repeats equally specious canards about life expectancy, the uninsured, preventable deaths, and preventive medicine. All of its assertions about these things have been long ago debunked.
But this is not about information. The goal is to create a sense of crisis that will cause the public to accept government-run health care. And this “news” magazine has been engaged in this project for a long time.
Obvious and Urgent … Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, and even the American Medical Association, which fought Medicare for so long, are all agreed that a new federal role is necessary to help Americans pay their bills.
In other words, government intervention is urgently needed to avoid catastrophe. The only problem is that the above passage is from a piece that the magazine published in 1971.
That’s right. These people have been giving us the Chicken Little treatment for nearly 40 years. This is reminiscent of the hysterical nonsense they publish about “global climate change.”
But that’s another story.
Comments 18
Two things for you to address. First, the latest Commonwealth Fund study key findings:
# More than half (54%) of U.S. patients did not get recommended care, fill prescriptions, or see a doctor when sick because of costs, versus 7 percent to 36 percent in the other countries.
# About one-third of U.S. patients—the highest proportion in the survey—experienced medical errors, including delays in learning about abnormal lab test results.
# Similarly, one-third of U.S. patients encountered poorly coordinated care, including medical records not available during an appointment or duplicated tests.
# The U.S. stands out for patient costs, with 41 percent reporting they spent more than $1,000 on out-of-pocket costs in the past year. U.K. and Dutch patients were most protected against such costs.
Second, I’d like to see your definition of a ‘healthcare system’. If you think it exists in isolation from society then I don’t think you’ve got it right. For example, combining anti-poverty with antenatal measures will cut infant mortality in the US. Health policy is much more than fixing a broken leg.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 11:37 am ¶“Second, I’d like to see your definition of a ‘healthcare system’. If you think it exists in isolation from society then I don’t think you’ve got it right.”
Codswallop. It’s not the doctor’s fault when some poor bastard gets shot. All she or he can do is try to stop the bleeding.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 2:41 pm ¶‘It’s not the doctor’s fault when some poor bastard gets shot. All she or he can do is try to stop the bleeding.’
Sorry - but you’re wrong. You are the same as Catron - defining health as an illness system that doesn’t include prevention. Health policy absolutely includes banning smoking in public places, making people wear seatbelts and it ought of course to include tighter gun controls.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 3:32 pm ¶This is why healthcare can never be a right in the US. We are a country founded on freedom, while the UK is a country grounded in subjugation.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 4:08 pm ¶‘We are a country founded on freedom, while the UK is a country grounded in subjugation.’
So Matt, do you drive around without a seatbelt and smoke in restaurants? After all, you don’t want to be ’subjugated’, would you?
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 4:46 pm ¶“Sorry - but you’re wrong. You are the same as Catron - defining health as an illness system that doesn’t include prevention. Health policy absolutely includes banning smoking in public places, making people wear seatbelts and it ought of course to include tighter gun controls.”
Disease and crime are two distinct evils, which require entirely different trainings to combat. While there is obvious interplay between the two, that they are distinct fields is not a high-level concept.
As for gun control, it’s illegal under the US Constitution and this is likely to change right about the time that Prince Charles starts sending money to the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Posted 02 Dec 2008 at 4:55 pm ¶“do you drive around without a seatbelt and smoke in restaurants? After all, you don’t want to be ’subjugated’, would you?”
I do! I also carry a gun. I know that gets your panties in a bunch, which is half the fun in doing it.
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 1:01 am ¶‘As for gun control, it’s illegal under the US Constitution’
Well, it’s your funeral. There are what - about 30,000 gun homicides/suicides a year and 85,000 non-fatal gun injuries - if that isn’t a public health problem I don’t know what is.
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 4:03 am ¶Marc, I am against both of those being a law. That being said, I have worn a seatbelt long before it was a law and never smoked in restraunts even when I was a smoker. The seatbelt issue should be an individual choice and the smoking in restraunts should be at the discretion of the business owner. It does annoy me that we are persuing policies that turn us into an insufferable nanny state like the UK.
I don’t view suicide as a gun problem. There are many other ways that are just as easy if not easier and less prone to error. Also, there would arguable be more homicides if law abiding citizens were not allowed to defend themselves with firearms. A friend in Oxford had his house broken into by a knife weilding man. My friend hit the guy with his cricket bat to subdue him. Guess who went to jail? Also the perp filed a lawsuit. It seems like most of my UK friend have horror stories about the nanny state on that sad little island.
Another nugget that can’t seem to penetrate the twisted logic of anti-gun zealots: criminals, by their very nature don’t obey the law. We are not enforcing the laws on the books regarding firearms. What good will more do?
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 10:01 am ¶Marc, you are a public health problem. You support a system of healthcare that fails the very people it is intended to help. Guns don’t kill people, it is the person who holds the gun and pulls the trigger. Ted Kennedy’s car has killed more peolpe than my gun.
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 10:12 am ¶Many studies show the association between guns and high homicide/suicide rates in the US. Perhaps Matt can explain exactly what’s ‘error prone’ about putting a gun in your mouth compared with other methods, and why the UK - sad though it may be to you - is actually a lot happier because our gun homicide rate is a tiny fraction of yours. To pretend this isn’t a huge public health issue is a complete fantasy.
As for seatbelts, would you be happy to bear the increased insurance costs from many more people flying through windscreens? Or indeed you or your family paying the full costs when no insurer will touch you?
And what about drinking - you actually have more restrictive drink-drive and younger age drinking rules than we do. And smoking - you were first with public health bans. So no lectures on ’subjugation’ please.
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 4:50 pm ¶“And what about drinking - you actually have more restrictive drink-drive”
Drunk driving laws protect my right not to get killed by some drunken idiot. At my old job I used to drive home right past our main bar district at about midnight. Very glad to have strict punishment for these jerks.
Posted 03 Dec 2008 at 10:58 pm ¶How typical of Marc (and all other Brits) to talk about gun homicides instead of simply homicides.
Posted 04 Dec 2008 at 10:51 am ¶Also, here in the U.S. we have something called justifiable homicide, something Marc wouldn’t understand because self-defense is practically illegal in the United Kingdom.
Posted 04 Dec 2008 at 10:53 am ¶‘How typical of Marc (and all other Brits) to talk about gun homicides instead of simply homicides.’
The question you should ask yourself is how many excess homicides and injuries, suicides and accidents above what you’d expect if it wasn’t for flooding the country with millions of firearms. That’s why it’s a public health issue.
Posted 04 Dec 2008 at 12:53 pm ¶By that wide swath, everything is a public health issue. Paul do you want to play a fun game? Check this out:
The question you should ask yourself is how many excess injuries and accidents above what you’d expect if it wasn’t for flooding the country with millions of plastic buckets. That’s why it’s a public health issue.
The question you should ask yourself is how many excess homicides and injuries, suicides and accidents above what you’d expect if it wasn’t for flooding the country with millions of automobiles. That’s why it’s a public health issue.
The question you should ask yourself is how many excess homicides and injuries, suicides and accidents above what you’d expect if it wasn’t for flooding the country with millions of prescription pills. That’s why it’s a public health issue.
The question you should ask yourself is how many excess homicides and injuries, suicides and accidents above what you’d expect if it wasn’t for flooding the country with millions of kitchen knives. That’s why it’s a public health issue.
Fun huh?
Posted 04 Dec 2008 at 4:22 pm ¶It may be fun for you Matt but if it wasn’t for people like Ralph Nader one of your parents may have died in an auto crash and you may not now exist. In an unintended way of course you make the point for joined up health policy – it’s precisely by looking at all factors that may be causing death and injury that you arrive at the truth. If you exclude guns you might just as well exclude cigarettes, cars, solar radiation, cholesterol, obesity, alcohol and poverty. If you honestly believe that actions such as seatbelt law and anti-tobacco measures do not save lives and cost the healthcare system less then you’re wrong. If you don’t care whether they do or not - as I suspect you don’t - then I guess the only conclusion is you’re anti-society and an anarchist.
Posted 04 Dec 2008 at 5:45 pm ¶In Marc Brown’s world, the speed limit on every road is fifteen miles per hour, and every girl has to get a double mastectomy. After all, “public health” trumps all else, including freedom and pleasure!
Posted 07 Dec 2008 at 7:16 am ¶Post a Comment