Lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year in the United States.What a claim, eh? That's far more deaths than Nixon/Kissinger produced by delaying the withdrawal from 'Nam to a decent interval (just counting "our people", that is).
Of course observational science and its attendant measurements have limits, both by design and by ungovernable desires. this study was by a batch of single-payer enrages.
A "finding" like this unfortunately sounds hysterical to the untutored imp-mind of a person like... well, me. are undetected and or untreated morbid processes really killing off that many of us each year? Unlike seat belts, the life-extending benefits of wearing health insurance can't be quite so simply and directly counted.
The grail number here in this study is 1.4 -- i.e. the uninsured are 40% more likely to die this year then their corresponding insured fellow citizens. Now no one can sanely deny that folks cruising through their daily routines with undetected hypertension, diabetes, or testicle tumors are in the same potential category of quart-a-day bourbon drinkers and sky divers; but how would one go about measuring this added mortality risk?
You'd have to check out death rates among the uninsured and a corresponding cohort of insured -- in effect compare each uninsured person to his covered twin -- "covered" here meaning insured for the prior three to five years, and twin meaning -- ideally -- "identical" in age, sex, income, ethnicity, education, blah blah blah... you know, corrected for the basic dimensions such sociostats usually include.
I guess the scarcity of these studies in ready public supply prolly proves "we got a problem, Houston", since one can probably conclude that the information shortage occurs because any interested party with bucks enough to fund such work prolly would find any death claims are death claims too many, to paraphrase tail gunner Joe.
But be they what they may, these numbers -- do they increase the collective urgency of the 85% of us McJob smurfs already covered? Do we hear these numbers... if we hear these numbers... and go "Oh my God, stop this insanity! Uncle! Plese cover the other Americans out there uncovered! Where do i send my check?"
Or is it like earthly climate change, to people living on another, climate-controlled planet?
Comments (4)
Just as Michael Moore thinks he has to play along and say the Dembots are wimps not frauds, so the single payer advocates think they have to talk about abstract deaths. If they spoke of cost containment, economic maldistribution, private taxation, and slapping down doctors and corporate honchos, they'd disappear from the MSM altogether.
But they aren't in it anyhow, so why not speak the truth about power.
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 27, 2010 4:15 PM
Posted on January 27, 2010 16:15
my instinct form day one was
attack the sectors cost
hit it with emergency controls
force an end to screening for priors
jaw bone and wishbone
but that would be to attack the system not
scheme with it to extract yet more money
under cover of humanism and stop the insanity
of course the beveridge plan is best
but de facto it could be approached
but starting from the cost side not the coverage side
set a goal after the freeze the sector must grow slower then gdp till we reach oecd average gdp share
and escalate the measures as the ppresent systen fails to meet performance standards
pick off the insurance companies by nationalizing em as an emergence measure
every thing an emergency measure
health dangers policing power of the state etc
45 k deaths come in here
after
after after its made clear
by impact
ie a roll back
that joe six packs premia is going down
as is the premium of the 85 % of covered souls
that the unconvered get in at that point looks like costless altruism
Posted by op | January 27, 2010 4:32 PM
Posted on January 27, 2010 16:32
Harvard says it so it must be true.
^^^^^^^^one of America's enduring myths.
Posted by CF Oxtrot | January 27, 2010 4:48 PM
Posted on January 27, 2010 16:48
And the topic of the cause, rather than just the treatment could come up. How about 35-hour work weeks, plus bicycles and gym memberships for everybody, some ag reform to subsidize unprocessed food sales, and an escalating tax on automobile miles and luxuries?
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 27, 2010 5:48 PM
Posted on January 27, 2010 17:48