Obama's Medical Bankruptcies Numbers

[Angel Heart]

The Numbers

Medical Bankruptcies: A Data-Check
March 05, 2009 12:37 PM

(3 p.m. update: See italicized items with responses from the lead author of the Harvard study, Dr. David Himmelstein.)

President Obama’s kicking off his health care reform today in the worst possible way: with a mischaracterization of data.

“The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds," Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply unsupportable.

The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent.

A more recent study by another group, approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than “one every 30 seconds.”

More...

 

[RetiredGySgt]

The Numbers

Medical Bankruptcies: A Data-Check
March 05, 2009 12:37 PM

(3 p.m. update: See italicized items with responses from the lead author of the Harvard study, Dr. David Himmelstein.)

President Obama’s kicking off his health care reform today in the worst possible way: with a mischaracterization of data.

“The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds," Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply unsupportable.

The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent.

A more recent study by another group, approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than “one every 30 seconds.”

More...

Any lie will do. Liberals believe that the ends justify ANY means.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Yep I caught that today, one of The Obama's economic team was asked on live TV about this phony, fear mongering shit and was informed that it wasn't true, couldn't possibly be true, the math doesn't work and can't ever work, and wasn't the President spreading fear through lies? The economic team member's response? "So... The point is... blah blah blah..."

Where's all the morons now who claim "Booooosh lied to get us into Iraq" on this definite, provable, admitted fear mongering lie?

This is right up there with Hitlery's "bullets in Bosnia" lies, where are you truth detectors and what say you?