Lies, Statistics, and the 45,000 dead from lack of insurance
September 21, 2009, 2:44PM
The shocking headlined screamed "45,000 die each year from lack of health insurance". WOW! That sounds bad. Now let's see how they came up with that.
from :http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2009/09/uninsured_hold.html
"Researchers from Cambridge Health Alliance report in the American Journal of Public Health on a study that followed 9,005 adults under 65 years old who took part in a national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1986 through 1994. After 12 years, 351 people had died. Sixty of them were uninsured and 291 were insured. "
From this, and based on the estimate of 40 million uninsured, they extrapolated 45,000 deaths per year. Nowhere did they investigate the cause of the deaths, they simply attributed all deaths to lack of insurance to get the shocking headline number. So, using their logic, the 291 others deaths in the study must be attributed having insurance. Therefore having insurance increases your risk of death by 500%! YES! Almost a quarter of a million killed each year because they have insurance, and Obama wants EVERYONE to have insurance? Aren't enough people dying already? What kind of a monster is he?
(For the sarcasm impaired, I realize this is absurd and a complete misrepresentation of the data. The point is that the original 'study' is just as absurd, but no one bothered to look critically at the data because it supported their agenda.)
tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com. |
