Health Care
Abusing Reconciliation?
Datagraphics can be used to inject civility into public debates. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (and others) has been quoted as saying that reconciliation has never been used to pass something like health care before. And people who are pre-disposed to believe what the right says believe him without checking further. And people pre-disposed... »
An Allegorical Tale
Imagine for a moment that the following story is true: Someone very close to me has been experiencing an incredible run of bad luck. Every day for the past few years my friend (let’s call him Paul) gets mugged. The robbers punch him then take his money but they leave his wallet. He’s not hurt... »
Rush Limbaugh’s RAW NERVE
Several sites have been airing a snippet of William Shatner’s new TV show “Raw Nerve“ where he interviews Rush Limbaugh. The part making the rounds is where Shatner asks Limbaugh about health care. It starts like this: Shatner - “Here’s my premise and you agree with it or not: If you have money, you are... »
Overall Health Care Effectiveness
The health care debate has been very vigorous, both in the country and on this website. The Right claims the US has the best health care system in the world. This belief is undoubtedly due to the very low government involvement in US health care system. More government involvement or at least more restrictive... »
Cancer Survival Revisited
This week we’ll briefly revisit the Cancer Survival Rate study. We’re doing this in preparation for an article next week that will present a comprehensive look at all the measures discussed to date of the effectiveness of the US health care system. But first, let’s re-cap the earlier article. A study was recently published... »
Preventable Deaths
An article that’s almost 2 years old has resurfaced recently (link, link, link) that ranks the US as last in preventable deaths among 19 industrialized countries. Most coverage of this story simply cites the statistics without pictures. Last place seems pretty bad, but as we’ve discussed earlier, someone always has to be in last... »
Cancer Survival
There’s been a new talking point in the health care debate in the US; the cancer survival rate. Many bloggers (site, site, site, and site) and research institutes have discussed the results of a 2007 article in the medical journal Lancet Oncology that compared cancer survival rates in several different countries. The blogs and... »
Health and Infant Mortality
In an earlier article I used infant mortality and longevity as 2 indicators of healthiness of a population. Recently there has been some discussion over the infant mortality rate aspect of this measure. So I thought I’d revisit the infant mortality statistic. As you will shortly see it seems I reached a correct conclusion... »
OpEd: The Nature of the Health Care Debate
The health care debate is the topic on many TV and Radio news and commentary shows and unfortunately many of them keep rehashing the same arguments and, to my mind at least, are not advancing the general discussion. One example comes from a recent ABC News “This Week” episode where the Right’s “Death Panels”... »
Health Care In the District of Columbia
In an earlier article we examined how the US health care system fares in comparison to the world. This comparison was aimed squarely at free market statistics, namely supply and demand. Supply was measured by the number of doctors per capita and demand was measured by dollars of health care spending per capita. We... »
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