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It is a good idea to know the truth about statistics being thrown around in the health care debate. Here are 2 examples that are used all the time that show how statistics can be manipulated and then adopted as truth. For many of you this should be eye opening.
#1: US ranks 37th in the world in health care
This is based on the WHO rankings, which if you are not familiar with, you will be surprised to see what it is made up of. The WHO rankings are a ranking of how socialized a system is and not the quality of health care. So let me break it down for you.
The rankings are made from 5 factors weighted as below:
1. Health Level: 25 percent
2. Health Distribution: 25 percent
3. Responsiveness: 12.5 percent
4. Responsiveness Distribution: 12.5 percent
5. Financial Fairness: 25 percent
“Health level” is a measure of a countries “disability adjusted life expectancy” which on the surface makes sense as a measure of the health of a country. Life expectancy is related to many factors not related to health care. In fact, if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from MVA’s from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth. So basically take out the things not tied to health care and our life expectancy actually is the best. Hmmm... wonder why the WHO didn't do that...
“Financial fairness”- this one is a joke and is essentially a political tool pushing more socialized systems. It measures the % of income spent on health care which means it places a more value on systems that force the wealthy to pay for the country's health care. This factor doesnt measure the quality of health care but rather how the costs are "equaled" out. So a country in which all health care is paid for by the gov't via a progressive tax system but delivers terrible care, would score perfectly in this ranking. Well, seems like this is not a measure of a health care system at all but rather the intentions of the WHO to push their political agenda. This allows socialized systems to seem better without them having to be better.
“Health Distribution and Responsiveness Distribution” measure inequality in the other factors. In other words, another thing that does not actually measure the quality of health care delivery. It is possible, for example, to have great inequality in a health care system where the majority of the population gets “excellent” health care, but a minority only gets “good” health care. This system would rank more poorly on these measures than another country that had “equal” but terrible health care throughout the system.
So you see the WHO rankings are BS. They artificially prop up socialized systems where things are "equal" and the cost is placed on the wealthy. Notice that 62.5% of the rankings are based on how socialist a system is. So if obama's plan goes through, without anyone even getting care through the obama plan, our rankings in the WHO rankings would immediately skyrocket without our healthcare actually changing.
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#2- 46 million Americans are uninsured because they cannot afford coverage
Again, a commonly cited statistic that ostensibly shows just how bad the American system is. It is usually cited by people trying to promote gov't expansion to "fix" the problem. They use it to show that people cannot afford health care. This figure, like the last, is very misleading.
Let me break it down for you:
a) 10 million of those "46 million" are not US citizens.
b) 17 million more can afford health insurance but chose not to buy it- 8.3 million make $50-75K and 8.7 million make $75K -100K
note: $50,000 is between 200-300% of the poverty level for a family of 4. $100K is 450% of the poverty level for a family of 4.
c) 10-14 more million are eligible for gov't programs like Medicare, Medicaid, or SCHIP but don't apply for it or list it in the Census report.
d) 5-10 Million were uninsured only temporarily. The number from the survey was a snap shot and also includes those between jobs who are temporarily insurance-less but end up getting insurance during the year.
Now there is some overlap between these groups that has not yet been accounted for. The work here has already been done for us by Anthem as well as a few other groups all with similar findings.
The study by Anthem bluecross blue shield in 2003 looked at the overlap, those who chose not to buy insurance as well as those temporarily uninsured. The real number of uninsured Americans is 8.2 million
Convenient that no one cites this number. I guess soap boxing is harder to do with a statistic like 2.7% of the population is uninsured and cannot get coverage.
OMG you're so right!! GREAT POST!!!! They should pay higher taxes, because they end up rising the cost for us all in the end!!
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