RSS Feed MenuLeft-wing columnist David Sirota takes me to task in a blogpost for being too flippant in a TV debate yesterday morning. He’s right too. I should not have shrugged off his point in the dismissive manner he correctly condemns here. I’m guilty, and I’m sorry.
On the other hand Sirota is guilty too, and of something more serious: the use of bogus statistics to distort. Let’s go to the tape.
Sirota claimed on television that a Harvard study found that 45,000 Americans a year die because they lack health insurance.
It’s important to understand that this number is not based on any actual observation of actual uninsured people.
Instead, it is based on older studies that compared groups of uninsured and insured people, and found higher mortality rates among the uninsured.
That observation comports with common sense – and supports the case for actions, which I favor, to extend insurance coverage more widely and ultimately universally.
Now comes the caveat, the thing that separates common sense observation from fiction with numbers.
We can see that the uninsured are more likely to die. But are they more likely to die BECAUSE they are uninsured? The uninsured are also more likely to smoke. They are more likely to be overweight. And they are more likely to get shot.
The Harvard number is calculated on the assumption that the uninsured are 40% more likely to die than the insured. But former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill computed that after adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, and other risk factors, the uninsureds’ excess risk of death dropped to as low as 3%.
No doubt: it’s risky to be uninsured, and we should act to reduce uninsurance. David Sirota favorably cites a study by the Urban Institute. Yet the Urban Institute itself pre-emptively rebuked Sirota’s abuse of its work.
Limitations of the current analysis
At the most basic level, the above estimates are not precise “body counts.” Rather, the reader should view them as reasonable indicators of the general magnitude of excess mortality that results from uninsurance.
Again: sorry for my own excess flippancy in responding to Sirota. WIll he take equal responsibility for his much graver offense of abusing statistics for polemical purposes?
BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:47 pm
“But former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill computed that after adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, and other risk factors, the uninsureds’ excess risk of death dropped to as low as 3%.”
Why would she be right? Where was her study backing up her supposition? This is just conjecture. Why should the uninsured be 37% more likely to die of smoking etc than the insured. THEY ARE THE SAME PEOPLE.
ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:26 pm
BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:47 pm
…..now now…..David would never, has never, ever
“use(d of) bogus statistics to distort.”
….cross his heart and hope to die
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Barry – I would assume that they did longitudinal studies on the data and compared like risks with like risks … insured smokers w/uninsured smokers … insured alcoholics w/uninsured alcoholics, etc.
That said, the insured are much more likely to regularly interact with doctors who not only check their vitals and give them penicillin – but who also will advise them to reduce or stop smoking, to get them into weight loss programs.
I have a friend who was an alcoholic (or is an alcoholic who doesn’t drink, however they call that stuff). Her boss at work was noticing a serious decline in performance that endangered her job, and recommended a month stay at a rehab center (she had tried numerous times before to quit with no success). A year plus later, she hasn’t touched the bottle since … also, she wasn’t financially wiped out by the $25K price tag that the stay cost, since insurance picked it up. Think she’d have gone without insurance? Think she’d be alcohol free today without the treatment? No and no, from my experience.
More likely to get shot? What percentage of the gun related violence in America is due to drugs? What percentage is due to mental illness? Since the non-insured tend to live in clusters, do you think that proper treatment of drug addictions and mental illness that are often out-of-reach for the uninsured might reduce that incidence of violence? Perhaps the uninsured wife and kids of a psychotic who doesn’t get treated are at any greater risk of gun violence than the wife and kids of someone with violent tendencies who receives regular therapy and even drug treatments?
Sirota’s statistics may be overstated, but I don’t think that a pure longitudinal study is sufficient to debunk it – this is one place where a deeper delving into the mechanisms in play is necessary.
BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Balcon. I was talking about the former Bush era CBO person disputing the scientific study with something she quote “computed” in other words she pulled the 37% figure out of her a$$.
I don’t believe for one minute that the uninsured have a 37% greater risk of dying from outside factors separate from being uninsured. They are related and intertwined. The insured and uninsured live side by side, OK the very poor may live in areas of predominately uninsured but that does not mean they would not have a far better outcome death rate wise if they were insured.
bc68251 // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:41 pm
“The uninsured are also more likely to smoke. They are more likely to be overweight. And they are more likely to get shot.”
This has no basis in fact. It is a strawman, a red herring, a distraction… and nonsensical. The insured and uninsured are indistinguishable in a community. In fact, those who are insured one day can be uninsured the next. How does losing your job predispose you to being shot?
As an argument against health care, this is pure idiocy.
rbottoms // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:53 pm
We can see that the uninsured are more likely to die. But are they more likely to die BECAUSE they are uninsured? The uninsured are also more likely to smoke. They are more likely to be overweight. And they are more likely to get shot.
According to David Frum, this poor fellow needs a kidney and a flak vest.
Republican adviser faces health care’s costly bite
Former McCain strategist is about to lose his health insurance
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 2009
If history had taken a different course, Doug Holtz-Eakin would be inside the McCain White House driving the Republican president’s domestic agenda, including health-care reform. But now, one year after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost the presidential election, the man who was by McCain’s side as the campaign’s top health-care guru remains unemployed — and his COBRA health coverage is running out.
Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky “preexisting conditions” that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage.
“A right renal autotransplant,” he said, pointing to his abdomen as he described the 1990 transplant surgery he went through after one of his kidneys was damaged in an accident. “They got rid of the artery, moved my kidney and rebuilt me for the 21st century. If you look at my file, any insurance company would go, ‘Hmm . . .’ ”
Good luck.
sdspringy // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:28 pm
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/45000_uninsured_deaths_just_mo.html:
The study is rife with caveats and disclaimers. The authors admitted,
“Our study has several limitations… We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview… Earlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7% and 11% of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified. If present, such misclassification might dilute the true effect of uninsurance in our sample.”
Yet the study doesn’t claim that the deaths it estimates among the uninsured are preventable, only that they are “associated with” lack of health care.
By contrast, a comprehensive study of over 35,000,000 — yes, that’s million — acute care records over a recent three-year period concludes that preventable medical mistakes actually cause a similar number of deaths in the government-run Medicare program. The sixth annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospital Study examined records “among Medicare patients at virtually all of the nation’s 5,000 non-federal hospitals” from 2005-2007 and determined that over 92,000 deaths were attributable to medical errors, about the same as the average estimate in the uninsured study.
Further, the report noted that mistakes which could harm a patient are only reported 73% of the time and concluded that their figures “likely represent a fraction of the number of avoidable patient safety deaths and associated costs.”
Yet why aren’t the Democrat demagogues braying about a “holocaust” in government-run Medicare, as they did about the inflated uninsured deaths figure? Are they going to admit that it is really their plan, not the Republicans’, to let people “die quickly”?
The fact remains that going to a doctor is not a financial decision. Even those with insurance fail to utilize the services provided or the advice given to them by a physician. Over 10 million persons currently fail to utilize federally funded insurance and remain uninsured. When your instinct for survival fails to direct you to utilize free healthcare or to seek medical attention then the fact that you are uninsured seems to be the least of your problems. And your low chances of survival are pinned to your low level of common sense more than your low income level.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:26 am
sdspringy, speaking of the number of medical errors revealed in the files of medicare patients, wrote: “why aren’t the Democrat demagogues braying about a “holocaust” in government-run Medicare?”
Democrats are braying about this because it would be impossible for the government-run Medicare program to cause medical errors. Medicare is nothing more than a payment system. It’s the doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers that cause medical errors. And, as your post pointed out, all of these medical errors occurred at non-federal hospitals. So, neither the Medicare program nor any other federal entity had anything whatsoever to do with these medical errors.
I’m really curious to see if these facts, of which you apparently were unaware, alter your completely unfounded view that it is the Democrats’ plan to let people die quickly.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:27 am
I meant to write “Democrats are not braying . . . “
BoolaBoola // Dec 3, 2009 at 5:10 am
Actually, 45K is a very small number in a country population 350M
Sorry if that sounds flippant but it’s true.
That’s the good news. The bad news is the non-lethal consequences of not having insurance and not being to afford preventative or early care, are most likely very much worse than the deaths. A diabetic who only gets emergency care will likely lose one or both legs and half his vision by age 42. If Parkinson’s Disease patients don’t get their meds they fall. Bone fractures, head injury, soon yer talking real money.
littlemind // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:16 am
dishonesty is really not good manner perhaps but for other human benefits its good
http://ezinearticles.com/?Best-Anti-Wrinkle-Cream-Review—Revealed-by-Dr-Oz-on-Oprahs-Show&id=2271470
Toddtheconservative // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:50 am
How about a dishonest war? This has to be the best anti-war article I’ve ever read:
http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/12/a-season-in-hell/
MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:50 am
David, you’re a pell to admit that you were flip in responding to a far Leftwing pundit… and he was more wrong in using stats in a deceptive, lying fashion.
Of course, the Left has a long, long track record for lying and using stats deceptively… as well as investing in science and stats the job of truth-teller extraordinaire… and dismissing religion or morality as quaint provinces of the cavemen. Like with ClimateGate –where leading climate scientists and global warming advocates have been exposed for manipulation of stats and deceit not seen in science since the Piltdown Man– trusting in the Left to use stats and science in a truthful manner is like looking for a man of virtue in the Congressional Democrat Caucus. A bad idea fraught with inconvenient truths –but not the kind the Left expects.
cpanza // Dec 3, 2009 at 9:20 am
I’m not sure it matters whether it’s 45K or not. The question is whether there are negative outcomes suffered by people without insurance or for those who are under-insured, whether it’s 45K or 2K doesn’t matter. The real question is whether this is an (a) moral problem and (b) an economic burden on others that can be lessened through universal coverage. The case for insuring them (the few, the many, or whatever) relies on either or both of (a) or (b) being true.
James Cody // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Does June O’Neill’s study take into account the possibility that people without health insurance before 65 die earlier because they didn’t have insurance and preventive care before they got on Medicare (e.g., they die at 70 instead of 80)? If not, it seems those deaths should be attributed to the lack of health care insurance.
rbottoms // Dec 4, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.
In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.
Bastards aren’t even hiding their greed.
Guess which side the GOP will take in the debate of affordable coverage for all v.s ever higher corporate profits.