-By Dan Scott
With all the rationalizations going around by liberals to justify a government take over of the health care system, the newest one is a Harvard Study claiming approximately 45,000 people a year die due to a lack of health insurance. President Obama used a similar tact to rationalize his position on the public option for the uninsured, but as it turned out one of his examples was shall we say was not quite what he represented. Setting aside the veracity of such claims, does it justify a starting point of a trillion dollars of tax increases for the first 10 years? It needs to be said the following 10 years will be even more expensive. Is the public option the only option to paying for health care for those who are economically disadvantaged? Why is it the Harvard Study thinks the lack of health insurance is the cause of the deaths and not the attitudes of those people who have mostly preventable diseases? This is not to say that all diseases are preventable and that an individual’s genetics may predispose them to certain ailments.
So many questions but the Harvard Study managed to avoid them all. The money quote for the Harvard Study is quite telling as to the reach taken by the liberal elites to rationalize the public option. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.” Notice that each of these diseases used as an example are mostly preventable by lifestyle. In addition, apparently the Harvard Study did not take into account that pharmacies with companies like Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, CVS or Walgreen’s offer significant drug prescription discount plans that address the cost of drugs for a 30 day supply for chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease are less than a pack of cigarettes.
The Harvard Study is an example of classic circular reasoning using the Correlation Fallacy. The assumption of the Study was the lack of health insurance causes preventable deaths, then went on to seek only those examples of uninsured individuals who died of a disease which was preventable and then drew the conclusion a lack of health insurance was the cause of their deaths insisting a public option was the only way to prevent such deaths. If the Correlation Fallacy is what passes for science then we need to question those who dole out public and private funds in short supply which could have been used to actually cure a disease. Aside from the causes of those diseases, the lack of a cost effective medical treatment is the real problem, not the lack of health insurance to pay for the medical treatment.
Since the Harvard Study narrowly focused it’s assumptions and conclusions, let’s focus narrowly on some points obfuscated by the Harvard Study, namely personal responsibility, attitudes that contribute to the cited diseases, cost of medication and funding research of drugs that cure those diseases. Given the way the Study cleverly avoided the aspects of personal responsibility and attitudes of those who have the cited diseases, what conclusion could they have drawn regarding people who were “uninsured”? If smoking, excessive weight, drinking alcohol in excess and taking illegal drugs in general contributes to these type of diseases then the Harvard Study should have concluded that the same attitude that causes a person to be uninsured is likely to be the same attitude to live a lifestyle that contributes to those diseases. If you can get monthly medication for less than the monthly cost of drinking alcohol, smoking, etc. then does this person have a problem with the cost of the medication to treat their chronic disease or does this person have a non-monetary problem? Will the public option cure or treat a person who has a non-monetary problem any better than the current fee for service medical system? The answer is NO. So why spend a trillion dollars of other peoples money to support someone who won’t take personal responsibility by originally engaging in or continuing with the contributing behavior?
How much money did the Harvard Study cost? This is currently unknown, however, it cannot be an insignificant amount of money. Such studies can run anywhere from $50k to $500k. That money could have been used to fund a cure for any number of diseases let alone pay for indigent care. More importantly, a point obfuscated by the Harvard Study was what diseases currently do not have a cost affordable treatment that significantly impairs an individual financially from taking advantage of the treatment. Instead of demanding society spend a trillion dollars over 10 years, would it be not more cost effective to find a cure for expensive diseases? Why meddle with the process when in fact the cure is cheaper than maintaining the problem? Example, contrary to Obama’s claim that most of the money spent for medical care is in the last years of life, most of the money (especially Medicare) is spent on maintaining a person in a nursing home at $6,000 plus per month plus medications and procedures due to intractable diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia. More than 50% of the residents in nursing home and Assisted Living Facilities suffer from these two diseases. Approximately 67% of them die there. Why not prioritize government funding for medical studies to research specifically directed at curing these two diseases? Curing of either one of these two scourges of the elderly would literally save billions a year in Medicare costs since these people would no longer be in nursing homes. Will the public option cure Alzheimer’s and Dementia? NO, they will only continue to pay for end of life care caused by these diseases.
What does Medicare have to do with the uninsured? President Obama claims he is going to partially fund government subsidies for the uninsured from savings in Medicare. This is a total fallacy since the numbers of people with Alzheimers and Dementia are going up significantly in the coming years consuming any potential savings. I would also point out that the Medicare tax we and our employers pay is a dedicated tax for the Medicare Trust Fund and not for any other use. What President Obama proposes is in fact illegal unless Congress changes the enabling legislation for Medicare. The legality of the matter says any savings in Medicare costs is money not redeemed by the Medicare Trust Fund, which is in fact IOUs that Congress left in the Trust Fund after borrowing the money for other purposes. What the Democrats really mean by the proposed short term savings in Medicare is money from the general revenue not going for the redemption of those IOUs by the Medicare Trust Fund in the current fiscal years. In other words, this is all a shell game and worse, kicking the problem of Medicare funding a few years down the road to create a huge problem for someone else to solve by raising taxes.
Had the Harvard Study not engaged in Correlation Fallacy, their expensive study would have drawn completely different conclusions and more importantly pointed out the real problem for anyone with a chronic disease, the cost and efficacy of the medical treatment for the disease. Maybe the real conclusion we should draw here is the billions of dollars wastefully expended in white collar scientific welfare for studies that are either misleading, politically motivated or whose conclusion is just plain previously obvious to the normal person. This wasteful spending is not limited to the medical sciences but also to other lines of research that produce no practical solutions such as Global Warming. Had the billions of dollars wasted on useless studies been spent on the cure or effective medical treatment for chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia we would not be talking about people being unable to afford healthcare. The public option is just one more liberal boondoggle that will cost the country money with no measurable cost effective result but it will line someone’s pockets since they are campaign contributors. AARP (sale of Medigap insurance) being one of the many shameless examples of who will financially benefit by this boondoggle.
Sources:
FACT CHECK: Some Obama health care stories flawed
Post Hoc Fallacy (Correlation Fallacy)
High Blood Pressure: What Causes High Blood Pressure?
Alzheimer’s Association Releases Dementia Care Practice Recommendations For End-Of-Life Care
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.
Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.
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