Debunking “Dying for Coverage” (part 2)
May 9th, 2008 | by admin |Update to: Is being uninsured a fatal disease?
Linda Gorman has once again taken Families USA to task for their bogus research. Last week it was about their claims of Medicaid "cuts." Most recently, her post at StateHouseCall.org debunks their "Dying For Coverage" articles, which make claims on how many people die from lacking insurance in each state.
The implication is, of course, that if being uninsured kills, then the proper policy is to make sure everyone has insurance! That means that government makes it a crime for people not to buy politician-approved insurance (the "individual mandate" ), or the government takes over the insurance industry by becoming the "single payer." But as I’ve written elsewhere , having someone else pay for your medical care does not guarantee that you get it.
Even if the Families USA studies were true, it does not justify the authoritarian policies they recommend. One could use the studies to motivate people to donate to charities that assist people in buying insurance. But it is immoral to force people to do so .
In any case, on to the debunking!
The studies, writes Gorman
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.
The first study is from 1993. Of it Gorman writes:
For the study’s inference to be meaningful, one almost has to assume that the uninsured stayed uninsured for the full 19 years! But if that were so, the group would in no way be representative of the U.S. population as a whole.
Gorman also notes that
A 1994 paper by Sorlie et al . in the Archives of Internal Medicine did provide information on the effects of government coverage on mortality. It reported that people on Medicaid and Medicare had higher mortality than either the uninsured or those with private insurance.
Families USA uses statistical methods to determine for how many deaths are attributable to being uninsured. Gorman notes:
there is no point at which anyone from Families USA actually examines a medical record. There is no interview with any doctor, any patient or any family of a deceased patient. There is only algebraic mumbo jumbo in support of an unsupportable claim.
http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/dying-for-media-coverage/
tags: Families USA, Linda Gorman, uninsured
