I have written before about the phony studies produced by Steffie Woolhandler and her fellow single-payer zealots at Physicians for a National Health Program. Well, they’re at it again.
This time, they’re claiming that 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance. Because these people are “Harvard-based,” many otherwise intelligent people will buy this BS.
Ironically, this triples the mythical death toll these very people have been promulgating since the 1990s, when they began claiming the figure was 18,000. As I pointed out last year, that claim was bogus as well.
That 18,000 number was ginned up by Woolhandler and her accomplices to support Hillarycare. This time they have upped the ante in order to give Obamacare a much needed boost.
But these people can’t be trusted with statistics. Their hastily-produced studies are politically-driven and their methods are (at best) sloppy. The very first sentence of this “study” reveals its agenda:
The United States stands alone among industrialized nations in not providing health coverage to all its citizens.
That’s not how genuine science talks. In fact, this latest faux study is another of PNHP’s “meta-analyses” of old data. And, like its previous studies about medical bankruptcy, HSAs, and the uninsured, it is BS.
UPDATE I:
John Goodman has a good post over at Health Affairs about the PNHP study, its shoddy methodology and the history behind its hysterical findings. Well worth a read.
UPDATE II:
Alan Grayson (the jackass who claims Republicans want you to “die quickly”) has apparently been promoting this absurd study as if it were legitimate.
Quite a combination—single-payer zealots, a phony study, and a Democrat congressman with diarrhea of the mouth. Very convincing.
Comments 6
Amazing. You “pointed out” that somebody else had questioned their methodology without actually refuting any of the data presented.
Interestingly enough the PNHP study also starts by explaining what was wrong with the older data and why the numbers aren’t correct.
Anyway, that’s all irrelevant, I want to actually know what your objection actually is to this report?
People will die because the are uninsured, just as people will die through single payer rationing.
Healthcare is a finite resource that will, for certain areas need to be rationed. The question is how is that rationing undertaken. If you believe in the private sector then you shouldn’t have a problem dying because they can’t afford treatment, or delay in seeking treatment.
If you have no moral problem with that then really you shouldn’t worry took much if the number of uninsured dying is 100 or 100,000.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 1:53 pm ¶David, I don’t understand what you find controversial about uninsured people being more likely to die. Surely that’s the whole point of insurance - to insure against the risks. Maybe you can tell me what I’m missing here as you seem to have the real science at your fingertips.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 4:54 pm ¶It’s not that I find it “controversial,” Marc. I find the study’s conclusion wholly unsupported by the objective data. Like all PNHP “studies” this one is a work of fiction.
That, Daveon, is where my “objection actually is to this report.” It’s possible that some tiny number of people die because they think their lack of insurance precludes necessary treatment.
But this “study” hasn’t provided enough convincing evidence to support even that modest claim.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 8:05 pm ¶Sorry David - you’ve lost me. Please explain what the advantage of insurance is if only a tiny (one? two?) people with the wrong mindset are dying when they shouldn’t.
Posted 20 Sep 2009 at 5:35 am ¶When I read the study, I noticed that even if all numbers were accurate, it seems to be correlary and not causational. Perhaps the data show that people that make bad decisions have a higher mortality rate?
Posted 21 Sep 2009 at 9:49 am ¶Specific problems with this class of work include 1) inability to determine whether people remained uninsured after their first interview, 2) no information on the cause of death (health care has little to do with homicide deaths a leading cause of death in the late teens and early 20s), and 3) completely inadequate statistical controls for the demographic differences between the insured and uninsured that also have an independent effect on the probability of mortality.
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 10:12 am ¶Post a Comment