WHO Study Used to Justify ObamaCare a Scientific Fraud
During the long debate over health care reform in 2009 and 2010, the advocates for the legislation made several key arguments, suggesting most of all that a health care financing system that covered a large number of the currently uninsured would be fairer — that a primary goal of health care reform was redistribution. This argument reflected the conclusions of a 2000 study by the World Health Organization, which made fairness the most important single aspect in its evaluation and comparison of health care systems around the world.
This argument was not sufficient on its own to get the massive Affordable Care Act made into law. So advocates made several other arguments, including one that was buttressed by several studies that seemed to indicate, though not with great confidence in the numbers, that the lack of insurance led to a significant number of excess deaths among the uninsured population (tens of thousands each year). Hence, reform would lead not only to more equality, but also to higher quality and better outcomes.
Some who were opposed to the legislation pointed to the fact that the new program would add hundreds of billions in new federal outlays at a time when the federal deficit was running in excess of 40% of federal expenditures, and by spurring demand without any increases in supply, inevitably drive up health care inflation.
The advocates for reform countered by arguing that the bill, according to CBO estimates, was in fact a deficit reduction measure, and that over time, due to higher taxes on wealthier Americans and reductions in some Medicare expenditures, the bill would be fully paid for with a net surplus remaining — a contribution to deficit reduction. Finally, advocates argued that as a result of the legislation, the rate of increase in annual health care costs in both federal programs and private insurance would come down after new policies were developed following review of many new “studies” and reports by commissions reporting results to the secretary of HHS.
So what was not to like in a bill that provided more fairness and higher quality, reduced the deficit, and slowed the rate of health care inflation? How could a majority of Americans both then and now be opposed to such wondrous social legislation?
One of the reasons for the legislation’s unpopularity was related to its legislative history — a bill jammed through by budget reconciliation in the Senate, and the only major piece of social legislation in American history passed on a party line basis, with virtually no input from the opposition party in its over 2,000 pages of new rules. In addition, it is certainly the case that many Americans were skeptical of the claims about the magic deficit reduction elixir that the Democrats in Congress had allegedly found. There was great skepticism about the real cost of the legislation, which could be much higher if a significant number of corporations elected to drop their health insurance coverage and instead pay a modest penalty, leaving their workers to join the new and heavily subsidized exchanges.
Then there was the CLASS Act, a new long term insurance program within the reform bill that collected premiums for several years, but showed no outlays during the same period. Not surprisingly, this contributed some pixie dust to the tune of tens of billions to that magical deficit reduction calculation in the first ten years of ObamaCare. Some actuarial analysis suggested the program would be a long term financial disaster, and one Democratic senator called it a “Ponzi scheme.”
Finally, within a short period of time of the passage of the legislation, the administration started granting waivers to various parties from various provisions of the new law, with many of the waiver recipients groups that were, not surprisingly, politically connected to the Democratic Party. With each waiver, some of the projected deficit reduction disappeared.
But one reason that is almost never offered as an explanation for why many Americans have remained skeptical of the claims about the new health care reform bill is that they no longer behave like sheep when presented with the claims by “experts” who are, in many cases, no more than partisan advocates. The Climategate scandal, which appeared to show scientists working to insure their data fit their preordained conclusion about man-made global warming, may have contributed to skepticism about many of the claims about ObamaCare.
We have reached a Socialist utopia when it is OK that the end justifies the means.
We have reached a Socialist utopia when all assumptions are considered false except for those held by people in authority.
We have reached a Socialist utopia when the concept of truth is considered false.
We have reached a Socialist utopia when law has become an anachronism.
We reached a socialist disaster when obama was elected.
You got that right, Gordo.
One of the very obvious conclusions should be that if the USA stopped paying into the UN and the WHO that money could be spent on healthcare at home rather than lining the pockets of “experts” who like the IPCC experts are tasked to support previously drawn conclusions.
Many of the countries held up as models have poor outcomes on patients that never make their data base. The best example is the “Infant Mortality Rate” where many countries don’t even consider the child alive until after 30 to 60 days or of 28 weeks gestation. Many countries consider those outside those parameters throw aways.
Timely access to care is another parameter that the EU does not wish to discuss particularly in the 70s and 80s group and they avoid this by not stratifying their data. The recent death of one of their own waiting for an abdominal surgical procedure for nine months illustrates this but does not show up on databases under the category of “killed on waiting list” nor do the disabled show up on the list of “welfare or disability due to inability to obtain curative care.” Two of my friends in Canada would have shown up on this list in the past five years.
And other legislation, with the exact ‘redistributive’ intentions, is being implemented at every session of this criminal Congress.
The ‘redistributive’ requirement of Obama’s enacted legislation is intent on redistributing the intelligence quotient, of which Obama intends to benefit the most. Even if it works as planned, Obama will still be one of the dumbest humans on planet earth, and his theft of intelligence will have gone to waste.
Which is why having “Snooky” as our next President will help the United States restore more of the ‘dignity’ that has been totally absent during the Obama Monarchy.
Great article! It’s extremely satisfying to see so-called experts’ claims exposed as lies through simple math. Elegant like a mathematical proof, too, as in “A=B, and B=C. Ergo, They lied. Q.E.D.” Should be required reading.
Next numbers you should deconstruct are those fraudulent “unemployment” statistics the federal government wants us to believe….
“The study, which ranked the United States 37th of 191 countries in overall performance, relied on incomplete data, flawed comparisons, and estimates by “experts” to fill in the many data gaps. ”
Gee sounds just like the AGW crowd.
The mission of the UN is to destroy the US, and loot it.
And we pay them to do it.
I’m shocked Mr. Baehr, there is fraud in science by the UN ! Can’t be ! Please round up the usual suspects, immediately.
Why anyone is the least surprised at this is a puzzlement. Our experience with the IPCC should be adequate proof that the UN isn’t even the slightest intersted in actual scientific proofs, but in advancing socialism worldwide.
Somewhere I read that the person who led the IPCC study was a graduate student. ARGH! And they wondered why there was all kinds of crap in there like the Himalayas going dry.
The UN bureaucracy (especially at the lower echelons) and its various agencies are either beehives of hard core marxists and/or islamists. Every action they undertake is to advance their cause, no matter the truth or consequences.
But, come to think of it, so is the current US government and its hacks.
BTW, BHO filed “papers” this morning for his “re-election” (coronation, actually). One wonders if his sealed records are part of these “papers” filed. Wait a minute, I forgot; records and papers, laws and the Constitution don’t matter anymore. I should get used to it.
Don’t be alarmed at anything the socialists have to say, you just have remember one thing, the 180 degree rule, if they say north it’s really south, up is down so on. As a whole they are not trust worthy people as ideology rules. They are the followers of the world living in a box made for them by the unions, academia and their propaganda arm, in the MSM. They are the ants of the human world sent out on missions by following the sent trail dictated by this troika elite.
They are as Regan described them, the evil empire, they are the evil empire within and until they are eliminated freedom as we know it and would like it will continue to teeter on the edge.
“…including one that was buttressed by several studies that seemed to indicate, though not with great confidence in the numbers, that the lack of insurance led to a significant number of excess deaths among the uninsured population (tens of thousands each year”
Unfortunately the study that debunked these claims was virtually unnoticed. It can be found here: http://www.hsr.org/hsr/abstract.jsp?aid=4470695438
Pull Quote:
“The Institute of Medicine’s estimate that lack of insurance leads to 18,000 excess deaths each year is almost certainly incorrect. It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analyses, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States.”
Yes, the WHO rankings are bogus. If I recall, it was broken into three sections. The first was “equality” and was rigged in such a way that a country where 80% had excellent medical care, but 20% average, was ranked much lower than a country where 100% had average or worse. A country where everyone was given a sugar pill would have ranked above the US per this measurement.
If I recall the second, there were a whole range of criteria where the US was ranked at or near the top, but then a section about having a central government database of everyone’s medical records. The US did not have this, so it was relegated to the bottom for the entire score of the section (1/3 of the overall score). This nonsense was how Cuba got to near the top of the list. I can’t recall the third section, but yes, the rankings revolved around whether or not the medical system was monopolized by a central government. The quality of it was, at best, a secondary consideration.
I read thru the “bankruptcy” study. Also bogus. Amongst the rubbish, in the first (from 2001), it was revealed that, of the filers who had claimed medical bills as the leading factor in filing, the average total of medical bills over the preceding year before filing was about $3000.
The infant mortality statistics have always driven me around the bend, the data is so flawed. Not only do some countries not actually count all their births, the US is the world leader in neonatal medicine and infertility, which means we actually DO have more premature and sicker babies per capita than other developed countries- because these babies would never have been born in other countries. The sick ones would have been aborted and the twins, triplets and higher-order multiples due to infertility treatments would simply never have existed at all. While Americans may not want five or six kids anymore, they REALLY want two or so, and will do just about anything to get them.
Also, in some European countries, like the UK, they count babies born alive but who die even days thereafter, as stillbirths. Now that’s a great way to ratchet down your mortality numbers.
Statistics is a quasi-sophisticated way of lying, using them as deemed necessary to advance an ideological position – cause. The left has been masterful in doing this for half a century now, and not only on AGW and “climate change.”
Just look at the government’s monthly “unemployment rate” and “inflation rate” stats.
Obummy and Co: Liars-R-us.
Please!! When was there ever “science” in “social science”???
I think only economics comes close, because the numbers are already attached to the behavior. But as soon as one starts to quantify behavior, bias creeps in. The way the variables are treated is just too subjective, and if those can’t be manipulated enough then the researchers just avoid asking certain questions- because they already know they won’t like the answers.
If there ever was, it wasn’t in the last generation.
When Ludwig von Mises examined socialism, I think.
Dhimmitude and Obamacare
The origin of the quotation, “That government is best which governs least,” generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson but which first appeared in Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” is of less significance than its import.
Nowhere is that import more significant than it relates to the 2010 passage of the mislabeled Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PPACA, Obamacare, and no legislation in American history has ever demonstrated our government’s efforts to foist upon the American people rules and regulations which are not only repugnant to our national culture and traditions but, perhaps worst of all, are subversive.
That said, much has been written about PPACA and the contents of its 2,409 pages but only lately has attention has been paid to an alleged feature, its inclusion of a reference to dhimmitude.
According to Wikipedia, “Dhimmitude is a neologism . . . denoting an attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands [which] literally means protected and refers to a non-Muslim subject of a sharia law state.”
What makes dhimmitude relevant is that there are reports that the word and the concept are incorporated in PPACA along with Obamacare exemptions and exceptions for Muslims on page 107 of the law. (See below for that page in its entirety and see http://bit.ly/hRakSK and http://bit.ly/cBE7rd.)
In point of fact, it turns out that it’s a hoax, an urban legend perpetrated by some overly-zealous, overly-imaginative Obamacare opponent who, for reasons of his own–and possibly driven to the brink of madness by the true catastrophe that is PPACA–fabricated the whole scam. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4064)
There seems to be no shortage of ‘experts’ to validate any construct of the socialist/marxist empire. As the academics long ago sold the intellectual brain into slavery, we get to witness the repetitatve recital of ideas globally.
What I question is; where will the lefties go for their own medical needs? Misfortune will not avoid them as some kind of hands-off. If they trash the best health care in the world into bankrupcy then they will have to settle for less quality care.
Just think the elites will not be able to hop on their jets and fly away anywhere for decent medical treatment, like they do today.
Getting the dumbed down medical version is something they will have to settle for. Because money will not buy good health. But improved health always comes from money not bankrupcy.
No, I do not think the lefties will enjoy their medical utopia. They will hate it. Let’s not let it happen.
“They will haye it” you said?
You need to refresh your knowledge/memory of soviet communist ‘utopia,’ the privileges of the elites, the cadres and the card carrying members on the one hand and the Gulags and the ‘collectives’ for the rest of the ‘mentally ill’ intellectuals, the peasants and the lumpenproletariat on the other.
Oh what a beautiful memory; refresh it, please.
Gee, WHO would’ve guessed.
An expert is defined as ‘one who knows more and more about less and less until eventually he knows absolutely everything about sweet FA”. This is constantly proven by all the ‘experts’ moonbats foist upon us.
JJ,
That was also before the communist morphed into the EU and its crazy ideas to impose Isalm on the western world.
Communists would go for the best education that was possible given the shortage of money. Islam will not allow education.
Nor will it allow any medical facility that is imposed somewhere for the benefit of not them but just the elites. They will rampage the place, cut every doctors throat and burn the place down.
Muslims bring a whole new idealogy to the marxists world of elites and priviledge. No there will be no western hospitals for the elites to hop a plane to. They will be stuck with under-educated doctors and crude hospitals.
I’ll rank this report next to the Climate report. These kind of things sort of redefine polical science. What’s even worse, the WHO now seems to be the equivalent of the UN in incompentence, and political kiss-ups. Not good.