Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida has found his calling: death demagogue. First, he accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to "die quickly." Next, he likened health insurance problems to a "holocaust in America." Now, he's unveiled a new website entitled "namesofthedead.com" in memory of the "more than 44,000 Americans [who] die simply because they have no health insurance."
Just one problem: The statistic is a phantom number. Grayson's memorial, like the Democrats' government health care takeover plan itself, is full of vapor. It comes from a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health. But the science is infused with left-wing politics.
Two of the co-authors, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are avowed government-run health care activists. Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which bills itself as "the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program." Woolhandler is a co-founder and served as secretary of the group.
Sounding more like a MoveOn.org organizer than a disinterested scientist, Woolhandler assailed the current health reform legislation in Congress for not going far enough: "Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives."
How did these political doctors come up with the 44,000 figure? They used data from a health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994. The questionnaires asked a sample of 9,000 participants whether they were insured and how they rated their own health. The federal Centers for Disease Control tracked the deaths of people in the sample group through the year 2000. Himmelstein, Woolhandler and company then crunched the numbers and attributed deaths to lack of health insurance for all the participants who initially self-reported that they had no insurance and then died for any reason over the 12-year tracking period.
At no time did the original researchers or the single-payer activists who piggy-backed off their data ever verify whether the supposed casualties of America's callous health care system had insurance or not. In fact, here is what the report actually says:
"Our study has several limitations," the authors concede.
The survey data they used "assessed health insurance at a single point in time and did not validate self-reported insurance status. We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview." Himmelstein et al. simply assumed that point-in-time uninsurance translates into perpetual uninsurance — and that any health calamities that result can and must be blamed on being uninsured.
Another caveat you won't see on Grayson's memorial to the dubious dead: The single-payer advocate-authors also conceded in their study limitations section that "earlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7 percent and 11 percent of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified. If present, such misclassification might dilute the true effect of uninsurance in our sample."
To boil it all down in plain English: The single-payer scientists had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died. They had no way of assessing whether the deaths could have been averted with health insurance coverage. A significant portion of those classified as "uninsured" may not have been uninsured, based on past studies that actually did verify insurance status. But the Himmelstein team just took the rate of uninsurance from the original study (3.3 percent), applied it to census data and voila: More than 44,000 Americans are dying from lack of insurance.
Next, the political doctors cooked up scary-specific death tolls for all 50 states (California — 5,302, Texas — 4,675). Newspapers dutifully cited the fear-mongering factoids. The single-payer lobbying group co-founded by Himmelstein and Woolhandler took it from there. Last month, the group set up its own memorial on the National Mall for the phantom 44,000 casualties of uninsurance.
Himmelstein (who was also the driving force behind another flawed study tying medical debt to personal bankruptcies) eschewed scientific nuance and caveats to take to the airwaves and declare starkly that an American "dies every 12 minutes" because of lack of insurance. And now Grayson has taken the monumentally dishonest concept online to solicit sob stories and put flesh on the weak bones of these dubious death numbers.
Where's the White House health care "reality check" squad when you need it?
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
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3 Comments | Post Comment
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Ma'am;... As Joe Stalin pointed out, the deaths of thousands is a statistic... The numbers are baffling; and really beyond comprehension... We all know death, and all fear death, but death is not always at the door, and so we relax...But if we have ever really known grief as a constant weight that ever oppresses, then the death of another, or the death of thousands is hard to contemplate.... We all know that this country was founded with a statement of human rights, that all are equal, with the right to life and pursuit of happiness... Health and health care are essential to both rights, and if good health becomes the privilage of the rich for all time, then worries and grief will attend the people... Health care is but a sign that our lives, our health, our rights, and our livelyhoods are but inessential expenses to some people... If their rights to rob others of their resources is threatened, then they have money for war, but they have no money for peace if peace means the health and welfare of the people... ...I know the great divide in this land is not between liberals and conservatives... The wall no one can surmount is between conservatives and reactionaries...There are a lot of people who are conservative because they see the present good traded for a painful promise, and that is most of us.... Then there are reactionaries, fat with wealth, or sleek with power who would wrench back the hands of time until they point to when brute butchered brute for the blood of survival... We have worked hard for progress in this land... We have suffered much for the cruel promise of better, faster, and easier... All our technology has done is idle more and more -while making eternal the workday of the remaining slaves... We do not have better lives than before... We have contintually worse lives punctuated by monotonous worries of health and wealth... Why does the political system demand so much time on top of everything else for so few good miles??? It is a tinkertoy from a time when men were children... We put so much into politics, and the money is just the start for we give much of our lives; but what we get out is everything other than the good for which government was designed... I don't care how many people actually died for lack of insurance, or of wanting decent insurance... I care that one actual person died for lack of good medical care what ever the price... I don't care that people had treatment when they died if they were denied attention when it may have saved them... We don't need Doctor House... 99.9 percent of health care is basic medicine...It is those who wish to prolong life forever, which is usually the rich, and always the unjust -who most need expensive medical technology... If we had equality... If the rich suffered the very same conditions as the poor, they would still live longer, but care would improve for all...We cannot have equality, nor life without health... If the form of our economy, or society, or religion, or government deny us happiness, then we will not be healthy....This is a land of deep emotional pain, and the only medicine that will help most is by most refused; and that is justice... Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:22 AM
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Just ignore Mr. Sweeny's rambling rants. He's a left-wing loony who has a pathological hatred of the rich (plutophobia?) and thinks capitalism is the root of all evil.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Scot Penslar
Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:39 PM
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The published study (American Journal of Public Health, Sept. 2009), though deeply flawed, is quite interesting and revealing in some respects. First, by properly controlling the study population for numerous variables, including income, they showed that those without health insurance were more likely to die than those with insurance (3.3% vs 3.0% over 9 years). So despite income, exercise, smoking, etc. being equal, there is obviously something else about the people that chose to buy health insurance that allowed them to live longer than those people who did not buy health insurance. The authors admit that some "unmeasured characteristics" may explain their findings. Perhaps people who spend their money on health insurance (instead of other things) place more value on their health???
Also, the authors excluded everyone with government health insurance (Medicare, MediCal, VA, etc.) from their study. So in effect they compared people with no health insurance to those with private health insurance. Although the media have quickly distorted the findings by generalizing that a lack of "health insurance" is responsible for 44,000 Americans dying prematurely, any conclusions from this study pertain only to a lack of private health insurance. Implying that we may improve health or extend lives in America by providing more government health insurance is therefore speculative at best.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Santa Barbara doc
Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:53 PM
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