@rocket48 Said
And how could "they" know that the person would have gotten health care had they had insurance. Some people procrastinate on going to the doctor and I just don;t see how the study could be accurate.
Take a class or two in statistics or research methods. It's not incumbent upon me or them to try to impart such complicated things.
But if I were, I could imagine the following scenario that one might decide to study. It's a fairly straightforward research design.
1. Identify people with high blood pressure.
2. Find out if said people have insurance or not.
3. Check on them 5 years later and see how many are dead.
Supposing the uninsured group had 40% more deaths, one might infer that lack of insurance had something to do with it. There would be people in both groups that "procrastinate" as you put it, it makes no difference on the study results.
@Saegespaene Said
Tino, forgive me for snickering out loud, but how are you supposed to come up with a scientifically valid count of "people who
would not have died had they had health insurance"? What conditions would apply to validate this supposition, in order to gather the emperical data for such a survey? You're talking intangibles...
See above.
Quote: Also worth snickering over is the number of deaths: 45,000. When looking at statistics that are posted on the net, such as those for auto-related fatalities, the number is approx. 37,270 for 2008*.
This is just a sliver of the overall 'pie of death.' When it's your time to go, you're going.... whether you've got Health Insurance or not!
* -- source for same.
So are you suggesting that we shouldn't do anything to try to prevent deaths? In that case, let's get rid of healthcare altogether. It's too expensive.