Obama

[JWBear]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Life expectancy, the US ranks 30.......but we are a nation of 300 plus million so really should not be compared to Monaco or Iceland.

Our Life expentancy is the highest in the world when compared to the 8 most populous Nations on Earth(and 2nd in the world when compared to the 10 most populous).

I'm not seeing your reasoning here. Why would the population numbers make a difference if they are talking about statistical averages? Could you elaborate? (Or are you just going by what Bill O'Reilly had to say on the subject?)

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by JWBear

I'm not seeing your reasoning here. Why would the population numbers make a difference if they are talking about statistical averages? Could you elaborate? (Or are you just going by what Bill O'Reilly had to say on the subject?)

Never saw that O'Reilly show.... but if you're comfortable saying we suck because two dozen tiny nations(whose combined pop. would maybe rival that of our three largest states) so be it.

[JWBear]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Never saw that O'Reilly show.... but if you're comfortable saying we suck because two dozen tiny nations(whose combined pop. would maybe rival that of our three largest states) so be it.

Again... What does the relative population totals have to do with the average life expectancy? If the average is, say, 75 - it would still be the average regardless if the population was 300 or 300,000,000.

[Alex]

Ok, here's some of my responses to the list of concerns scaeagles linked to (this gives me something to look at so if I'm going to research for my own learning I'll bore everybody).

Probably will get really long so I'll spoiler it. All responses are my own (unless I cite something else) and will contain my own errors.

Spoiler:

Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the gov option!
Both sentences are completely untrue. It says that keeping your current plan (if you are self insured) is an option. If you don't want to keep your current plan you'll be able to change to any other plan you want. You do not have to purchase the public option established in Title 2 of the bill.

Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!
I do not see anything on this page, or any nearby page, requiring audits of individual insurers. It does require that a demographic report be developed reporting on the nature of insurance, general features offered, risk of regulatory impacts, etc.

Now, it certainly may turn out that this information is gathered in the course of actual audits, but the bill says nothing about performing audits (at least not here).

Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!
First of all, of course health care will be rationed. Health care is already rationed and there is no reason to expect that will change. All that might be changing is the basis on which it is rationed.

That said, I see nothing on page 29 that involves rationing. It does say that costsharing will be limited to $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a
family. But that is a cap on the cost to the individual or family, not a cap on the cost to the insurer. On page 27 it explicitly says that for those things required as part of an approved health care plan (whether public or privately sold):

Originally Posted by Page 27

...does not impose any annual or lifetime limit on coverage of covered health care items and services;

So, if it is covered, you may have a deductible or copay up to a certain amount but beyond that there is no cap.

Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

Starting on this page the creation of a Health Benefits Advisory Committee is laid out. This board will have up to 26 members serving 3-year terms and will make recommendations about a couple of things.

1. What should be the minimal services covered by qualifying healthcare plans. Plans are, so far as I can tell, completely allowed to exceed those minimums to their heart's desire.

2. Cost sharing recommendations for the Health Insurance Exchange plans (a pool of plans made available for peole who are otherwise not insured. If you're receiving other insurance through your employer these plans aren't relevant to you.

Either way, the statement is inaccurate for a couple reasons. The committee only establishes the floor on coverage, not a ceiling. And it does not bar coverage for other services.

No appeals process is mentioned. But that is probably because the committee does not actually set policy. It is hard to imagine how you'd accommodate appealing a recommendation.

Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.
But I thought just the previous item said that Health Benefits Advisory Committee would be in charge of that?

But yes, the bill does put someone in charge of managing the regulations contained within it. However, the same caveats apply to him as to the previous item. All that is defined for non-Exchange private health insurance is the minimum level of coverage required, the plans are free to exceed them all they want. So if coverage is denied in such a plan, it won't be because of a government bureaucrat (it may be in violation of the government bureaucrat but that burueacrat has no ability to declind coverage in a private health care plan).

Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.
Not enough information for me here without a more thorough reading of the bill. PolitiFact, however, labels this claim as Pants on Fire. (I'm avoiding their detailed analysis of this list while I come to my own conclusions.)

Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.
Well, every person is going to need some means of demonstrating their insurance coverage when using health services. This section lays out goals for electronifying and simplifying such issues.

But if a card were used it would be a national ID card in the same sense that your Social Security Card is. Which may not be good, but that horse is already out of the barn.

And I'm not clear on what the impact, if any, would on peopel using non-Exchange insurance plans.

Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

Almost couldn't figure out what this was talking about. But the language in question seems to be:

Originally Posted by Page 59

enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice.

First of all, that section is talking about electronifying payments between health care providers and insurance companies, not between you and the health care company. Second, the automated part is reconcilation not remittance. Third, if they wanted to use the power (not that anything in this section suggests they do), the federal government already has all the information on my individual bank accounts and could take it.

Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)
Extremely Misleading. Yes, there are subsidies for continuing existing health coverage for employer-based health plans between retirement at 55 and eligibility for other existing government health coverage.The fact that an employer may be a union has nothing to do with the program. It would be true of Wells Fargo and Microsoft employees as well.

Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.
Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)
True to an extent, but as said previously, currently any health insurance offering must conform to government rules. That isn't new, only the rules would be changing.

If insurer's want to provide direct individual insurance they'll have to quality to participate in the Exhange. Today they have to quality in different ways. It should also be said that while all individual insurance would have to be part of the Exchange, other insurance (such as employer based) are not required to be part of the Exchange (though as is universal must be minimal government requirements).

Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens
The bill does say that qualify Exchange plans will "provide for culturally and linguistically appropriate communication and health service."

I would certainly like more clarity on what that means. But it only means "illegal aliens" to the extent that one assumes that lacking facility with English means you are here illegally. I have a coworker who speaks very good English in general but when were were talking about my meat restrictions we had to go find a follow Chinese speaker to translate "mammal." I'd guess she also doesn't necessarily know the English worrds for her internal organs. Searching the word Aliens finds on page 143:

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

So at least in one program in the bill illegal immigrants are excluded.

So. That's the first twelve on the list. Of those, only one item is - in my opinion - a remotely accurate representation of what is in the bill. At what point does it become prudent to start assuming, lacking affirmative evidence otherwise, that the entire list is BS?

Now off to read if Politifact thinks I got anything wrong.

[scaeagles]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

[innerSpaceman]

I think he's saying, not to put words in his mouth, that because there are (very simple numbers) 10 people who live to be 100 v. 1,000,000 people who live to be 80, it's kind of unfair if those 10 centenniaries are each their own sovereign nation of one ... so that the nation with 1,000,000 people living to be 80 is ranked "11th."

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

I think he's saying, not to put words in his mouth, that because there are (very simple numbers) 10 people who live to be 100 v. 1,000,000 people who live to be 80, it's kind of unfair if those 10 centenniaries are each their own sovereign nation of one ... so that the nation with 1,000,000 people living to be 80 is ranked "11th."

Something like that....yes.

[Alex]

Statistical outliers will be more common among smaller populations.

Using a baseball analogy, a batting average of .400 is more likely over 20 at bats than over 200. The best hitter in his baseball might rank way behind the guy who only played two weeks of the season.

That's why we need to know not only how the nimbers are different but also whether those differences a statistically significant. I'm guessing they probably are in this case.

But then there are confounding factors thay are hard to eliminate. West Virgina and Santa Clara county could have identical populations and identical healthcare systems and I suspect you'd still see statistically significant differences in many demographic measurements.

Finally_ of course_ there's the fact that correlation does not equal causation.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Quibbles over the validity/bias of WHO's rankings aside, I still find the "infographic" rather illuminating. You may not be able to unequivocally say that all of those nations' systems are "better" than the U.S., but clearly they are neither utter disasters leading to the ruination of their nations' health, nor giant money sinks with costs spiraling out of control.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Quibbles over the validity/bias of WHO's rankings aside, I still find the "infographic" rather illuminating. You may not be able to unequivocally say that all of those nations' systems are "better" than the U.S., but clearly they are neither utter disasters leading to the ruination of their nations' health, nor giant money sinks with costs spiraling out of control.

Fair enough.