Posted on 07/06/2012 6:44:08 AM PDT by WXRGina
Following last week’s SCOTUS decision, Eugene Robinson took to his computer to peck out a gloating piece that presumes to tell us how lucky we are to have such courageous and smart people to look after us. He goes on to roll out a few time-honored chestnuts regarding American healthcare that I hear repeated over and over, but rarely do I hear anyone refute these silly claims.
1) “The World Health Organization gives the U.S. health system an overall ranking of 37th in the world, far below other Western democracies.”
It’s true, what WHO says, but is it accurate?
Among all the numbers and statistics tossed about in the “health care” debate, this is one of the most misleading. The nine year old survey attempted to use five factors to assess a country’s health care system. They were unable to gather complete information on many countries and so the researchers extrapolated using other bits of information like literacy rates, income and accessibility.
Quoting factcheck.org, “WHO researchers looked at, according to the group itself, overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).”
Among the mostly subjective criteria, it is conspicuous that quality of care, outcomes and survivability are not included in the survey.
2) “The CIA World Factbook — hardly the work of a bunch of left-leaning one-worlders — reports that life expectancy in the United States is not just lower than in other industrialized countries but also lower than in Jordan and Bosnia.”
OK, what is “life-expectancy?” First, it is not the same as “life-span.” Life span is the average age a person can expect to survive to if no other accident or illness intervenes. It is the average age at which people simply die of old age, which is about 77 years throughout most of the world (very close to the “three-score and ten” mentioned in the Bible).
Life-expectancy is the average age of death of all causes. The infant that dies at birth, the teenager that dies in an auto accident and the nursing home resident that dies in her eighties are all tallied and life-expectancy is the average. This can be determined for any age, e.g., the life-expectancy of a fifty year old non-smoking white male with high blood pressure can be determined by finding the average age of death for individuals with the same profile.
Health care has little effect on life-expectancy, except in infants and the last decade or two of life (where the US is at the top). Between those years accidents, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, obesity, neglect, suicide and war play the major part in life-expectancy calculations.
3) “Infant mortality in this country, according to the CIA, exceeds that of Slovenia and Cuba. It is possible to quibble with these figures but not to ignore them. We should be ashamed of ourselves.”
Mr. Robinson, your ignorance is legion.
When Obamacare passed in Congress, I had one of my classes spend a period debating the issue. Almost all those students in favor of the law made the same weak, uninformed assertions as Robinson. (Their average age was about 21 so I can forgive their ignorance.)
Infant mortality is a function of several factors that have to be taken into account in order to come to a meaningful conclusion. What is infant mortality? It is the number of infant deaths per population, but how is it counted? Differently from the US in most cases. In the United States all live births are counted. If the child dies from any cause in the first year it is counted for statistical purposes. We try to save virtually all babies that are born alive—24 week premies, severe congenital defects, overwhelming infections, etc. This is not the case in most countries. They count only the healthy babies, offering little help for the weak ones.
Babies die for a number of reasons: premature birth, infection, congenital defects, effects of drug use during pregnancy (illicit, as well as tobacco and alcohol), poor prenatal care (neglected by the mother, not lack of availability), abuse, neglect, accidents, etc. The numbers adjusted to correct for these factors finds American care of mothers and infants to be second to none.
These facts are not hard to find, but the hate-America, love-socialism crowd will have none of it. It is much more useful to repeat endlessly these pronouncements, in many cases knowing fully what despicable lies they are. Mr. Eugene Robinson should indeed be ashamed of himself.
The first fallacy is to consider Eugene Robinson as any kind of expert. His whole career is journalism.
The guy is a Jurn0List, been awarded Pulizter (Puke) Prize for fawning over Obama.
‘Nuff said.
It came out a few months ago that many of Robinson’s columns are just rehashed talking points he receives from Media Matters.
When affirmative action compels people to hire someone based on their race - why should that person be competitive? Why should that person work harder to deliver a better product? Or why does that person need to be intelligent? Or informed?
Affirmative Action leads to very suspect results, and by the state of Gene Robinson’s work, he seems to be a gratified beneficiary of the program.
As part of an in-depth investigative series into the embattled Media Matters for America progressive group, the Daily Caller earlier this week quoted a former Media Matters staffer as saying, “We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/is-this-media-matters-favorite-washington-post-columnist/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.