The Evil of Statistics

WhenWeAreQueen ^ | March 7, 2009 | Queen1

[pharmamom]

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

One of the more deceitful arguments for socialized medicine hinges on the assertion that Americans don’t live as long as citizens in other industrialized countries because we don’t provide health care for everyone. The press is complicit in this prevarication by running stories like this one from the AP:

"WASHINGTON—Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington."

My liberal physician friends throw this one at me quite a lot, usually following with a disquisition on Sweden’s health care and life expectancy. Well, let’s take a closer look at the numbers, shall we?

Ask a simple question: What happens to US life expectancy figures when you subtract black males from the populace? Black males have shorter life expectancy in large part due to high homicide rates; they die young and skew the numbers. Take them out, and what do you have? Higher life expectancies for Americans. A Reuters report notes:

"The higher AIDS death rates among blacks accounted for half a year of the gap among men, while higher murder death rates accounted for a full year — meaning those two factors represented about a quarter of the male life expectancy gap."

Women in America can expect to hit 80 years of age—right up there with the leaders in world life expectancy. (Unsurprising note: men die more often of unintentional injury. “Hey guys, watch this!”)

What else contributes to our poorer prospects? Obesity. Will universal healthcare fix this? No. Just ask any primary care doc around how successful he is getting his patients to lose weight and exercise. Americans eat too much and exercise too little. Better medical care won’t change that, although earlier detection and treatment of heart disease might.

The usual glib liberals will argue then that lower life expectancy for black Americans is due to racism. Of course. White Americans invented the AIDS virus to ethnically cleanse the country of blacks. And white Americans do all the grocery shopping for blacks and bar the door of the health clinics to prevent black access. Nonsense on stilts. Only an ignorant moron who never attended a day of school, watched TV or read a newspaper or magazine is unaware of the basics of good nutrition, proper exercise and safe sex. Poor black Americans have the means and opportunity to take care of themselves. Medicaid pays for transportation to a doctor’s office or hospital. Most doctors take Medicaid. Blaming whites for blacks’ poor health (and murder rate and AIDS infection rate) is just intellectual laziness.

Anyway, I digressed. I got into this mental rut when I saw an editorial in Investors’ Business Daily about rationing medication use in the UK and (gasp) Sweden. Seems that cancer patients are allowed to die for lack of medication in Britain and Sweden, while rheumatoid arthritis sufferers are denied expensive relief of their excruciating symptoms. It’s too expensive, don’t you know? Yet willfully stupid Americans persist in believing our government can provide medical care using the socialist template without falling prey to the same cost-containment measures enforced by other systems. In Sweden, purchasing medication privately is illegal—HillaryCare wanted similar provisions: seeking better care outside the government system would have been a felony. Just you watch—ObamaCare will have the same rules. No private care; can’t have injustice, can we?

[agere_contra]

People stay healthy here in Britain because we fear getting ill.

Not really joking. Having a cruddy health-care system, with all its many horror stories, really does make you more careful about your personal well-being.

[jr.ewing.78]

I don’t understand why so many Americans think that the solution to some people not having the same access to health care as others is to take away the access from the others and make everyone equally worse off. Seems bassackward to me, but that’s modern liberalism for you.

[aflipflop]

i am waiting to see how this whole thing will play out.