Posted by
Seneca on Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:26:54 PM
Articles and blogs that attempt to denigrate the quality of American Health Care usually provide three lessons in statistics that all politically aware people should know. Almost always they will refer to America's "mediocre to poor" ranking for Life Expectectancy (35th) and for Infant Mortality (44th).
Lesson 1
Always use correct figures when lying with statistics.... Both 35th and 44th are correct when measured against data reported by all UN member states.
Lesson 2
Always use measures that support your conclusion, even if it means using measures that don't actually measure what people think they do in the context in which you speak...Neither of these statistics actually measure "health care"; they measure the group effect of many societal factors in a particular country of which health care qualty is only one, and not necessarily the most important one. Consider:
Life Expectancy: They key factor here is the design of the human organism. The "average" human being (whoever he/she may be)
lives 66.6 years (population weighted). In 35 countries, including the US at 78.1, the LE is between 76 and 80 years. In
Japan it is 82, making this country the subject of numerous studies to explain why. Alas there are 139 countries below 76
and every country below 60 (except for Laos) is in Africa.... In the closely grouped range of 76-80, quality of health care
no longer is THE likely difference. Look at immigrant inflows, their health, combat deaths, automobile deaths, food and
shelter, climate, etc. which, at the margin, may now re-arrange the rankings.
Infant Mortality: Here, low numbers are good and the US, as above, is not the highest ranked. Our 6.26 per 1000 "live births"
is 44th with 45 countries in the range of 4.2 to 8.2. Only 16 countries do better while 145 countries are at least double the
U.S rate. Within this latter group countries with more than 100 million people include China (20), India (55), Indonesia
(xx), Brazil (22), Pakistan (65), Nigeria (xx), Bangladesh (xx) and Mexico. Alas, these countries contain 1/2 of the world's
population.....Within the US, the rate for black people is over 13 (if that means anything) but the crucial factor is the
number of premature births in this country - 13% of the total. They account for about 18,000 of some 27,00 infant deaths
within a year of birth. The statisticaly correct, but really gruesome idea, that all permature babies be killed before birth
would drive our IM rate down to about 2. This bizarre result ought to say something about using IM to say our health care
is "bad".
Lesson 3 Never mention statistics that might show a different "reality" from the one you are claiming. Better mesures of health care quality abound, but mostly in professional journals. Perhaps those readers who enjoy research might look at average life expectancy following first diagnosis of coronary disease; average waiting time for expensive tests felt useful by your doctor; organ transplants per population; ditto joint relacements; colostomy surgery; dialysis machines per diabetic; 5-year survival rates for cancer by type; preventive mastectomies; survival rate for unerweight infants, by prematurity range. And many more.
And then, when you next hear about America's lousy Life Expectancy and poor Infant Mortality, you will have reason for the anger you feel. This will help you throw rotten fruit harder and more acurately