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Michelle Malkin: The Bogus Death Statistic That Won’t Die
Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., has found his calling: death demagogue. First, he accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to “die quickly.” Next, he likened health-insurance problems to a “holocaust in America.” Now, he’s unveiled a new Web site titled NamesofTheDead.com in memory of the “more than 44,000 Americans (who) die simply because they have no health insurance.”
Just one problem: The statistic is a phantom number. Grayson’s memorial, like the Democrats’ government health-care takeover plan itself, is full of vapor. It comes from a study published this year in the American Journal of Public Health. But the science is infused with left-wing politics.
Two of the co-authors, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are avowed government-run health-care activists. Himmelstein co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, which bills itself as “the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program.” Woolhandler is a co-founder and served as secretary of the group.
Sounding more like a MoveOn.org organizer than a disinterested scientist, Woolhandler assailed the current health-care reform legislation in Congress for not going far enough: “Politicians are protecting insurance industry profits by sacrificing American lives.”
How did these political doctors come up with the 44,000 figure? They used data from a health survey conducted from 1988 to 1994. The questionnaires asked a sample of 9,000 participants whether they were insured and how they rated their health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked the deaths of people in the sample group through the year 2000. Himmelstein, Woolhandler and company then crunched the numbers and attributed deaths to lack of health insurance for all the participants who initially self-reported that they had no insurance and then died for any reason during the 12-year tracking period.
At no time did the original researchers or the single-payer activists who piggybacked off their data ever verify whether the supposed casualties of America’s callous health-care system had insurance. In fact, here is what the report actually says: “Our study has several limitations,” the authors concede. The survey data they used “assessed health insurance at a single point in time and did not validate self-reported insurance status. We were unable to measure the effect of gaining or losing coverage after the interview.” Himmelstein et al. simply assumed that point-in-time uninsurance translates into perpetual uninsurance — and that any health calamities that result can and must be blamed on being uninsured.
Another caveat you won’t see on Grayson’s memorial to the dubious dead: The single-payer advocate-authors also conceded in their study limitations section that “earlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7 percent and 11 percent of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified. If present, such misclassification might dilute the true effect of uninsurance in our sample.”
To boil it all down in plain English: The single-payer scientists had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died. They had no way of assessing whether the deaths could have been averted with insurance coverage. A significant portion of those classified as “uninsured” may not have been uninsured, based on past studies that actually did verify insurance status. But the Himmelstein team just took the rate of uninsurance from the original study (3.3 percent), applied it to census data and voila: More than 44,000 Americans are dying from lack of insurance.
Next, the political doctors cooked up scary-specific death tolls for all 50 states (California — 5,302; Texas — 4,675). Newspapers dutifully cited the fear-mongering factoids. The single-payer lobbying group co-founded by Himmelstein and Woolhandler took it from there. Last month, the group set up its own memorial on the National Mall for the phantom 44,000 casualties of uninsurance.
Himmelstein (who was also the driving force behind another flawed study tying medical debt to personal bankruptcies) eschewed scientific nuance and caveats to take to the airwaves and declare starkly that an American “dies every 12 minutes” because of lack of insurance. Now Grayson has taken the monumentally dishonest concept online to solicit sob stories and put flesh on the weak bones of these dubious death numbers.
Where’s the White House health-care “reality check” squad when you need it?
— Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Click here for more information. She can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 05:10 AM
Lesson on objective article writing.
Bogus Death Statistic, death demagogue, statistic is a phantom number, is full of vapor, infused with left-wing politics. the dubious dead, in plain English, cooked up scary-specific death tolls, fear-mongering factoids, behind another flawed study, eschewed scientific nuance and caveats, monumentally dishonest concept, put flesh on the weak bones of these dubious death numbers
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 07:12 AM
Lots of adjectives, no argument there; but the truth is there too. The writer of this article didn’t come up the line “An American dies every 12 minutes because of lack of health insurance”; the kooky left-wing came up with that ridiculous idea. And it’s got to be difficult to write about something as ludicrous as the “44,000 Americans dying due to no insurance” lie and not infuse the article with terms like “bogus”, “full of vapor”, “infused with left-wing politics”. That is the truth of the matter.
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 10:16 AM
The real problem with this article is that it does not attempt to do anything but discredit the number 44,000.
It has always been a journalistic tactic to point at “flawed” and “phantom” surveys when, in fact, most surveys are flawed one way or another.
So, Michele, how many have actually dies?
Probably just one is enough for me.
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 10:48 AM
Malkin, you are the bogus clown here. We finally have at least one Democrat Congressman with some spine that tells it like it is, and you can’t handle the truth.
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 11:13 AM
Of the nineteen wealthiest nations in the world, the US ranks dead last in amendable deaths (deaths that could have been avoided through proper health care). Michele might want to attribute that to something other than lack of healthcare coverage, but she would be hard pressed to do so since it is undeniable that nearly 50 million Americans (this is the term used by the census) are uninsured and another 50 to 100 million underinsured. The Institute of Medicine attributes at least 22000 deaths per year due to lack of healthcare coverage. Perhaps the doctors’ study is slightly off, but they at least admit its limitations - far be it from Michele to admit her limitations when it comes to unbiased “analysis”.
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 01:07 PM
Noozhawk lower its standards each time this opinion writer is pubished.
There isn’t one LOCAL writer who can replace Malkin’s syndicated boiler plate talking points with thoughtful writing?
Does Noozhawk even consider these points? Or is online journalism just about increasing page hits?
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 03:54 PM
It absolutely amazes me that the very people who hate Malkin the most are the very first to read her stuff and then spew their crap. Oh Noozhawk, you are so brilliant at pulling these Neanderthals out in to the light of day.
To those of you who keep comparing us to the other 19 countries, please, go live there and live very long. Just quit trying to make us like them. We like our risky death prone free market system quite fine here. After all we still make more wealthy here than anywhere else, we still have some freedom from overbearing government here and yes that may mean we don’t have a cradle to grave nanny state wiping our noses and tying our shoes but then most of us here cut our mothers apron strings long ago. BTW – they take real good care of inmates in a prison but most people would rather starve than live there. Give me liberty or give me death.
» wrote on 10.26.09 @ 07:27 PM
“We don’t do body counts” (General Tommy Franks)
I guess if this figure of 44 thousand is “vapor” we’ll never get an actual figure less any vapor. Is the sum zero? It reminds me of arguments that conservatives have about methodologies used to determine “excess” Iraqi civilian casualties. While discounting other’s methods and resulting figures, conservative don’t provide their own studies, method and figures because they don’t want to know, fearful it may hurt their true cause.
» wrote on 10.27.09 @ 12:53 AM
AN50:
You suggest to readers who disagree with Malkin that they move to one of the 19 countries (which are ranked ahead of the US in amendable death rates).
First, I applaud you for unoriginality.
This is a common strain of conservative retort. It’s the conservative take-it-all-or-leave-it exceptionalism argument. As in, “if you complain so much about poverty in America, why don’t you move to Rwanda and see how you’d like it there?”
Of course, this suggests that by acknowledging ANY American inferiority is a rejection of America as a whole. Heard this one before?
It’s ironic because the argument, which defends America as the best place in the world, actually undermines itself because it refuses to consider the process of robust self-critique and democratic adaptability that makes this country great.
Also, AN50, you explain the US’ comparatively high mortality rate by defending our “risky death prone free market” system. Probably not your strongest way to go on that one.
It’s the greatest nations (and people, groups,etc) that must stare the most critically at their own warts. It doesn’t mean we want to throw out the whole body.
I’m out
» wrote on 10.28.09 @ 10:05 AM
Sean O,
I did not suggest anyone move somewhere else if they don’t like it here. I suggest if you continue to hype someone else’s system you try it there first BEFORE you foist it on us. I don’t believe our healthcare to be inferior; in fact it is superior to all other nations. Take your statistics and shove em (you know there are lies, damn lies and then statistics). The fight to provide health insurance to all will result in much poorer health care for all. That is not a statistic, a guess or hyperbole; it is just plain common sense, based on supply and demand. We have a limited supply of healthcare, if you increase the demand either cost goes way up (to throttle demand) or you must ration service. Of course you could always increase supply, but then you socialist geniuses don’t have a method for doing that do you? We capitalist use the profit motive, but from what I’ve seen of socialism you just force people to do what you command or it’s the gulag. Since health care does not expand economic wealth (it’s a service) any expansion of the health care industry demands a like decrease in some other part of the economy (sorry you don’t get something for nothing). So what do you sacrifice? Manufacturing? Sure we already have everyone else making all our stuff for us (manufacturing increases economic wealth BTW). How about government services? Oh holy hell no! Not for you numb nut European socialist worshippers! You actually want to increase the biggest wealth drainer on the planet because your idiot econ professor fell in love with Marx.
Yes, a free market capitalist economy is risky, dangerous and fraught with uncertainty. That is sure to increase human mortality. But then again it’s alive. We could become like our continental brothers and all be diaper wearing crybabies waiting for big nanny government to tend to our creature comforts, making sure we appease our enemies in some cathartic hope they won’t hurt us. But crap Sean, if that is so wonderful, like I said before, go experience it firsthand there. Variety is the spice of life. We are the American variety, risky dangerous and deadly. You mama’s boys want to be coddled and nurtured go live somewhere where they already do that and leave us real men here to do the grown up living, thank you very much.
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