Health care victory

[FlashLackey]

I did not say that just because it came from a conservative source that it was false.
All that the source itself proves is the motive for a particular outcome.
What's at question is the method used to arrive at that outcome.

Association fallacy.

The source being conservative does not prove that they had a motive for a particular outcome. Maybe you are projecting the way that you think. That you want an outcome first and examine the facts second to see how they can fit with your desired outcome.

The paper and your argument is that by eliminating all patients that end up dying because they were either involved in violence or an accident makes the overall number more accurate because those deaths are not related to the quality of healthcare that those patients receive.

No. That isn't the argument. The argument is that unadjusted life expectancy statistics do not accurately reflect quality of health care. The authors have clarified that point on multiple occasions.

The one adjustment they made was never intended to demonstrate "THE" accurate statistic for determining health care quality. Their point was that significant differences between nations affect life expectancies for reasons completely unrelated to quality of health care.

Since you misunderstood the argument, much of your other commentary is rendered moot.

However, the author never really attempts to make the number more accurately reflect the premise by distinguishing between patients that received healthcare and those that didn't.
He simply eliminates a very large group of patients from the equation entirely.
Since those patients are obviously younger than the average age of life expectancy this naturally skews the overall number in a favorable direction.
This is called "Cherry-picking".

And again, you're arguing against your own apparent belief. In fact, your underlying point is the same one that the authors of this exercise are making. That Life Expectancy includes substantial amounts of data that changes the value despite quality of health care. In other words, using it to evaluate health care quality is cherry-picking because it ignores data (different rates of non-health care related fatalities and behaviors).

The same could easily be done with infant mortality rates.
We could argue that we should eliminate all woman who have natural childbirth from the equation because they could have given birth at home, in an elevator, or in the back of a taxi and therefor if their baby dies it is not a reflection on our healthcare system and should not count toward infant mortality rates.

Similar to before, you seem to think that there is some rule requiring that certain statistics must be accepted. If a statistic doesn't accurately explain something, nothing horrible has occurred. We just need to adjust it or look for other data that more accurately clarifies something.

The argument you describe here would be a valid one in the sense that the problem is nuanced. Specifically, based on the context you create, it could suggest that the quality of care that we have is very good. But, access is not.

Of course, as we know from previous discussions, the problem with infant mortality rates are that they are not consistently measured the same between nations and that there are other mitigating reasons why one nation would measure lower despite superior care (ie. being able to keep younger babies alive for longer).

If it skews the totals in a way that's favorable to the political outcome we're looking for then it ends up in our thinktank paper, if not then we just keep looking until we find something to eliminate that does... like homicide and traffic.

Exactly the same, a person can use a statistic of a large sweeping criteria that supports their political view despite known nuances that change the outcome. That is what is being done when someone tries to argue that comparing Life Expectancies accurately compares quality of health care.

How else could you describe the view of not only subsidizing a private industry with public money but also forcing everyone to buy their product, as trying to bankrupt that private industry?!?

Apparently, you aren't familiar with the terms of the bill. Though, that's not surprising. Few are. There are severe limits placed on how they can spend revenue. Forcing people to buy a companies product doesn't do them much good if another requirement is that they can't make a profit on the service.

As I'm sure our resident Wall Street expert will attest to, after the signing of the healthcare bill, insurance stocks and pharmaceutical stocks went up, not down.
Apparently, investors and analysts don't agree with your assessment that this is a bad thing for the private healthcare industry... quite the opposite.

Umm... Look again:

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WLP

Notice the "competitor" block. All down. They have all been going down for some time as passage of the bill became likelier.

The relatively small bump that occurred immediately after the bill passed is likely explained by a bunch of naive on-line investors not understanding the bill similar to how you describe it as being good for insurance companies.

Wow, how often does that happen?
Wall Street agreeing with a liberal instead of the conservative?
Are you SURE you're still a conservative?

Wall Street is and has leaned liberal for a long time. Follow the money.

Btw, having single-payer systems in other countries did not bankrupt their private healthcare industry either.

There is a massive difference between a private industry serving a nation and the boutique private health care companies scraping by on niche business in single-payer countries.