Perhaps We Have a Comprehension Problem
April 24th, 2008Okay, I admit it, I’ve been lurking on HuffPo again. I know, but I can’t help it. David Sirota is whining about the fact that Congressional Democrats are coming to the reality that the socialist pipe dream of universal, government-run healthcare won’t be happening anytime soon. It’s the usual bullshit about how there’s really a massive swell of popular support for pseudo-communist state-run "healthcare." The post itself is pretty damn boring, but the comments are a real hoot. Evidently, the fact that Democrat politicians are putting their political aspirations ahead of fealty to left-wing ideology is just a shock.
One portion of a comment stood out among all of the whining, however. In a sea of misinformed stupidity Phoenixfire089 managed to distinguish himself. Here’s the first paragraph of his comment (emphasis is mine):
Schumer’s quotes illustrate the gap between politicians and regular people. This morning I woke up to a guest on a tv program speaking about how American’s average lifespan has stagnated and that 20% of women will not make it to that average. Further, the United States is 24th in a ranking of infant mortality…lower than Cuba. According to recent studies, there is a statistically significant relationship between wealth and life expectancy.
I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t take a college-level understanding of statistics to grasp the idea that a certain percentage of any data set will fall short of the average. Hence the term average. So we’ve established that Phoenixfire089 is an idiot, but the statistics cited in that paragraph present an interesting, and common, argument for universal healthcare.
Virtually every discussion with a left-wing nationalized healthcare advocate will eventually lead to a lecture about America’s dismal performances in the areas of infant mortality and life expectancy. Naturally, they’ve picked two of the worst possible indicators of the quality of a healthcare system. Why are they such bad indicators? Because the results are contaminated by too many factors that are outside the control of any healthcare system, much less a government-run one.
But don’t take my word for it. David Hogberg has an article on this issue that gives a number of reasons why these two statistics are poor indicators of the quality of a healthcare system. It’s a couple of years old, but I found it particularly informative. If you find yourself having this debate with someone and need to respond to those statistics, this article is an excellent resource.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Don’t head over to HuffPo too often Brett, those people drive booze and gun sales. Spend too much time there and you’ll be broke, loaded for bear and massively hungover.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
On topic, you’re absolutely right. We only have a couple of health care crisis in this country and they’re both the fault of the government. One is medicare, the other is illegal aliens. The last thing we need is more government in health care intervention.