[Jesse]

Garbage in, garbage out. It's fairly apparent that the authors have a drum to beat about socialized medicine, then went out on a fishing expedition to try and find statistics to fit their preconceptions. There are a lot of reasons mortality might be higher in private hospitals, among which are sicker patients going to private hospitals, less sick patients admitted and kept longer in public hospitals because of social reasons. I can tell you, having worked in both kinds of hospitals, the bureaucracy makes delivering care frustrating, but I will take my chances in a for profit facility every time. I have no problem with paying more money to places which need to maintain a good reputation and have an incentive to do a good job...making money. In many public hosptials, there is little incentive except to show up among the ancillary staff.

[Randjuke]

I agree with your points, you must have been typing when I was reading. Meta-analyses are notoriously difficult to interpret and only as good as the individual studies that make them up (we are told nothing about the methods of the individual studies). To blame the difference in mortality on the shareholders expecting a profit is quite a leap to a conclusion as no study tested for that as a variable. As you say, the researchers most likely had a desired conclusion in mind before they undertook their analysis.