Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby is the leading "healthcare reform" goo-goo in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's administration. I give her that designation because Massachusetts politicians don't really care about anything unless voters make a stink and Massachusetts civil servants are typically against changing the status quo. So that leaves the goo-goo Bigby and her camp followers.
For example, she is a big advocate of accountable care organizations (ACOs) and global payment systems (GPSs). I personally have no problem with the ACO/GPS approach (but I think of it as HMO/capitation and I've been on it for 30 years). I just object to it being mandated. Mandates come from goo-goos who are interested in controlling people's lives because -- goo goos believe -- government knows better than you and I.
In addition, because HMO/capitation has worked well for me, I am wondering out of intellectual curiosity why so many other people objected to the idea when it was last brought into Massachusetts in the 1980s during Dukakacare. The answer to that question may prove statistically or logically relevant to implementation of the fifth of the five RomneyCare reforms currently in process.
But that's just a political debate. I tell you what I think. You tell me what you think. We take a vote, someone wins and someone loses, and we go have a drink together.
But goo goos play in a different universe. Bigby says hundreds of thousands of people die in the United States every year because of lack of healthcare insurance.
That would be over a million in five years, two or more million in the 10 years we typically use for governmental financial planning in the United States and Massachusetts.
Either Bigby really believes that claim -- which means let's check the math, Doctor1-- or she is intentionally deceiving Massachusetts residents. Given that I find her name on other deceitful documents (such as multiple deceitful Massachusetts DPH reports about amenable death rates, press articles about the number of Massachusetts seniors helped by Obamacare, a misleading DHCFP report on the acceptance of universal healthcare in Massachusetts, and more), I have to believe she is intentionally trying to deceive us. Her statement about hundreds of thousands of deaths really irks me because she goes on to imply that that means the United States should be indicted or whatever by the UN because we're violating or whatever the Declaration of Human Rights.
What arrogant BS (no need to explain that acronym)!
-- Dennis Byron
1 Let's play with the numbers:
- Most recent year I can find (2007), 2.4 million people died in the U.S.
- A couple of hundred thousand of them died in accidents or homicides, so healthcare insurance wasn't going to help them one way or the other, leaving 2.2 million
- But 1.7 million of 2.2 million were over 65, they had healthcare insurance because they have Medicare.
- OK, maybe some of the 1.7 million older than 65 got sick in their early 60s and didn't go to a doctor because they didn't have healthcare insurance; on the other hand, maybe some of the people over 65 died in accidents or homicides, so let's make some adjustment so we don't double count.
- What does Bigby mean by "hundreds of thousands?" Let's say she means 300,000. Does she believe 50% of the deaths in the U.S after subtracting seniors on Medicare and those tht died in accidents or homicides -- and adjusting as described -- were caused by lack of healthcare insurance?
- If she does, she’s forgetting Census Bureau statistics that say 85% of U.S. residents have healthcare insurance; let's call it 66% so we don't double count the Medicare population which is theoretically 100% insured (actually only 99.95% insured).
- That makes the relevant number plus or minust under 500,000 (total deaths minus adjusted-over-65 minus accidental/homicidal deaths of those under 65 minus those remaining under 65 that most likely have healthcare insurance)
- Does she really believe that somewhere from 60% to 200% of all non-senior/non-accidental/homicidal deaths in the U.S. are due to lack of healthcare insurance?
