Here we go again: Desperate Demcare peddlers play the Murder Card
Well, hell, Nick Kristof got away with it. Why not play it some more?
On the heels of Kristof’s bogus health care horror story accusing Demcare opponents of letting Uninsured Americans Die (never mind that his poster child was already insured and getting treatment), more liberals in the media are playing the Murder Card.
Here’s Ezra Klein indicting Joe Lieberman for his “willing[ness] to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.”
And here’s Kirsten Powers in full Chicken Little mode: “Americans will die if we don’t provide universal health insurance.”
The fear-mongers rely on studies that echo the single-payer activists’ bogus no-universal-coverage=death health statistic that won’t die, which I deconstructed here.
John Goodman at NCPA has a thorough analysis of the literature. Here’s an excerpt, but be sure to read the whole thing:
Last year, a report by Families USA made the astounding claim that 6 people die every day in Florida because they are uninsured. Seven die every day in Texas, 8 in California, and 25 in New York.
How was Families USA able to tally up all that carnage with such pinpoint precision? As one of us previously explained, these claims are based on a 15-year cascade of studies — each repeating the errors and misinterpreting or mischaracterizing the findings of the previous one and ultimately relying on data that is 37 years old.
It begins with a paper by Peter Franks et al. published in Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993, estimating that being uninsured increased the probability of death by 25%. Although the subjects were interviewed only once, for the study’s inference to be meaningful, one is forced to make the unverified assumption that the uninsured stayed uninsured for a full 19 years!
Continuing the saga, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) uncritically used the Frank’s result to claim that 18,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are attributable to a lack of health insurance. The Urban Institute updated the IOM report, and Families USA updated that report.
Not to be outdone, the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) repeated the exercise (with all its methodological sins) and boosted the tally to a 40% increase in the probability of dying for the uninsured. That produces a whopping 45,000 premature deaths every year — almost as bad as the Vietnam War. And, yes, we get a state-by-state breakdown. There will be 5,302 deaths attributed to uninsurance in California this year. There will be 75 in Wyoming, etc., etc. There is even a minute-by-minute tally: “The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance,” says David Himmelstein, one of the authors. “Now one dies every 12 minutes.”
As in the previous incarnations, the researchers interviewed the uninsured only once — and never saw them again. A decade later, the researchers assumed the participants were still uninsured and, if they died in the interim, lack of insurance is blamed as one of the causes.
Yet, like unemployment, uninsurance happens to many people for short periods of time. Most people who are uninsured regain insurance within one year. The authors of the study did not track what happened to the insurance status of the subjects over the decade examined, what medical care they received or even the causes of their deaths.
Also, before you go into mourning too quickly, be aware that when former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) June O’Neill and her husband Dave used a similar approach they found that the involuntarily uninsured (low-income people) were only 3% more likely to die over a 14-year period than those with health insurance. There was no statistically significant effect on the “voluntarily uninsured” (higher-income people).
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Last week: The depths of Demcare demagoguery.
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About 18 months ago, I changed jobs and had no insurance for about 7 months. I’m real lucky I didn’t die!
Dems lie, in other news, the sun rose today, IN THE EAST!!!
Its expected to set in the west latter this afternoon.
Yep, take money out of Medicare and then turn around and want 55 and up to go into Medicare — DemocRATS at their best.
Projecting as always, given that their plans center around denial of life-saving health care for the elderly.
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Comrade Obama (PBUH) and his democRAT / liberal / socialist / statist / marxist / communist buddies know a lot about murder.
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How many more ABORTIONS (aka “choices”) will occur this year due to their paying for abortion in foreign countries with our taxpayer “health care” aid to these counties?
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How many more ABORTIONS (aka baby murders) will occur in our country this coming year? It’s over 40 million and counting now.
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Some murders–of babies–are O.K. with these evil people. They are against “murders” of terrorists and enemies of our country.
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John Bibb
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She’s absolutely right. Americans will die if we don’t provide UHC. Of course more Americans will die if we do pass it through rationed health care and more taxpayer funded abortions.
But those will be different Americans.
The last I checked, I believe that people die even in countries that provide universal health insurance.
I have some news for Kirsten:
All Americans, with our without insurance, will die.
We have not carried insurance for 9 years now. Call me the Omega man.
You mean we’re all gonna die??? Say it ain’t so!!! Sorry, Kirsten – we are ALL going to die someday….far sooner if everyone is “required” to swallow ObamaCare
rocketman said:
On top of that – I still and always will look at the Dirty DemocRATS with loathing for what was done in SE Asia. AKA Soutn Viet, Cambodia and Laos. 3 million or so deaths directly tied to them.
Yes, and that’s actual murder, not the rhetorical kind that no one believes.
If you know someone who isn’t going to die I’d like to talk to them. Have them call me BR 549.
Over 99% of the women in New York City have cleft genitalia. This must be stopped in our lifetime.
Errah, dogs and cats sleeping together, doctors cutting off limbs to make a buck, republicans biting off the heads of baby bald eagles and drinking the blood, drug companies poisoning blind orphan’s school lunches, tiger woods sequestered in a nursing home, mass annihilation . . . .
Eat right.
Exercize daily.
Die anyway.
No Universal Heathcare means lower taxes and with more dead Americans, we lower our national carbon footprint.
Gee a win-win it seems to me.
/sarc
1,386,743,972,123.335 Americans per day die from unchecked and unreliable statistics. It’s a fact!
Wow on Kirsten. She says we shouldn’t worry about what things cost. I guess we should all be driving in Ferraris whether or not we can afford them.
Look, COSTS are how the doctor who provides the health care gets paid. Look at California. They can’t pay their bills. What are they doing? They are shutting down schools, national parks, jails, police. . . all things that the government both controls and pays for.
If you put the government in control of health care and hospitals, when the government runs out of money, they will close the hospitals to save money.
In government run health care, the only ‘savings’ will be in not paying the doctors enough to keep their doors open (the way Medicare does now).
The rhetoric is pathetic. Nobody goes without health care in America. Even illegal aliens who shouldn’t be here get health care in America.
I’ve peer reviewed your facts and found an error, but, I’m going to be an a$$ and not tell you which number you transposed! Try again!
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Good Catch, Rogue Cheddar! Keep them honest.
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John Bibb
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I think Kristen Powers is right. It is within the reach of this generation to end death once and for all. This is a moral imperative and Congress should declare a War on Death and make it a national priority. Anything less would be heartless and show a complete lack of compassion for the living.
Uh, huh.
Any coroners out there with the cojones to list as cause of death “Government healthcare rationing”?
Errah the libs declared death to war and now you’re proposing a war on death??!! Whats next, war on war and death to death? We’ll need to get Pelosi, Reid and Code Pink into a summit, pronto!
Ms. Powers generally doesn’t “put me off” as much as certain other lib commentators, much as I may disagree.
But this has about as much credibility as Russell Brand’s rant about people “not dying in the streets” in Britain because they have “free” health care (nothing is truly free; someone somewhere had to pay for it, which is a basic concept Powers and her ilk don’t seem to grasp). Of course, Mr. Brand was implying that people DO die in our streets because, presumably, they do not have and cannot get insurance due to lack of a gvt-run plan.
Ms. Powers has lowered herself to the level of a crude, second-rate “comedian”. Sorry, KP, but you have.
Another thought: It’s easy to say “who cares how much it costs” when none of “it” has to come out of your own pocket. It’s the rest of us she expects to foot this bill, not herself.
People without health insurance and people with health insurance die everyday.
Death is a natural consequence of life.
On December 14th, 2009 at 1:29 pm, Dexter Alarius said:
Any coroners out there with the cojones to list as cause of death “Government healthcare rationing”?
—————————————-
Or how about an ad with cute little children to counter the pro-Obamacare one (you may have heard of it; the darling little girl who announces that she will “get leukemia and die” because her family has no insurance coverage and can’t get it?)
In this one, a little girl will say, “My Grandma will die because the government wouldn’t pay for her medical care”, or even, “My Grandma lost her Medicare coverage”.
Genius!
This morning I saw a car that had a flat tire. We need Universal Tire Insurance! Americans will die if flat tires prevent them from driving to the store for 52″ LCD TV’s, beer, and potato chips!
My uncle was injured when a wooden bat he was using to club baby seals cracked and splintered, puncturing his lower arm.
The government should provide aluminum bats to citizens clubbing baby seals.
none of us are getting out of life alive. all these gubmint societal programs were based on a life expectancy of 65, not 85. so all you good democrats that want to keep ss, medicare and medicaid solvent, please take the blue pill on your 66th birthday.
Yet they have bums by the hundreds. They may not be dying, but passed out drunk? That’s another story.
The left does nothing except to continuously invent these stupid sob stories. Having health insurance is not a preventative against health problems. Life isn’t fair. Health insurance for all will not prevent people from getting life threatening diseases.
I’ve never liked Ms. Powers. She’s too idealistic and naive. I just can’t listen to the woman.
Even if it can be shown with any measure of scientific accuracy that “People die without socialized medicine,” I’d wager that more would die with it:
- Healthcare professionals who, like other government employees, don’t give a damn;
- A huge influx of more people seeking more “free” services overwhelming the same healthcare professionals;
- Unsanitary hospitals that will usually give you more diseases than you went in with; and
- A “supply sergeant” mentality on the part of the government when it comes to life-saving or life-extending services to the elderly (i.e., “We don’t have it, we can’t get it, you don’t need it”).
Socialism kills. Turning over our healthcare to socialists will simply give them a new avenue to kill people.
The smell of desperation is gamey.
This “worse bill congress ever generated” should be dead by now but the dems are so desperate that, as Christmas approaches, they will do anything to get it rammed through. Expect even more unbelievable “deals” to be offered for votes. This president is going to get even more downright ugly and will break any law to get his pet bill through congress. He knows that this is his destiny and it cannot be denied him. I wouldn’t be surprized to see dingy Harry keel over with a nervous breakdown from the white house pressure.
I know this sounds like a bit of a paradox, but maybe if this bill were on UHC, it would die by default…just saying.
I recall with fondness also that Rush will often point out that no one’s death certificate ever read “lack of health insurance” in ’cause of death’ and as a fan of Final Destination, I think libtards need to just get over the idea that they are important to the world.
I’d be fine with a universal health-care plan as long as it’s the one covering the universe of US Congressmen.