Kristof's Modest Proposal

Nicholas Kristof had a fine proposal in his column yesterday: if Congress fails to pass health care reform by the end of the year, he argued, its members should agree to become true representatives of the American people. Legislators should "surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured."

Under this formula, 15 percent of Senators and Representatives (and their families) would get no coverage. Another 8 percent would get inadequate coverage. For those who argue extending coverage to more people is too expensive, "here's their chance to save government dollars in keeping with their own priorities."

Big deal, some will say (though I suspect no members of Congress would dare say this): so a few legislators would have to make their way to emergency rooms for treatment. The government's role should be to protect Americans from lethal threats – terrorism, hostile states – and nothing else. Yet it turns out that America's health care system is a lethal threat. Kristof's column linked to this recently published Harvard study, which found that lack of access to medical insurance causes nearly 45,000 excess deaths every year.

The figure represents a sharp rise from the 18,000 excess deaths estimated in a 2002 study by the Institute of Medicine, completed at a time when the quality of treatment for those who could afford it was less advanced and the medical safety net was not as frayed. If you've been online for more than ten minutes by now, that means there's a good chance the death toll just ticked up by one. "The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance," said David Himmelstein, co-author of the Harvard study. "Even this grim figure is an underestimate -- now one dies every 12 minutes."

Comments (18)

1. "The figure represents a sharp rise from the 18,000 excess deaths estimated in a 2002 study by the Institute of Medicine, completed at a time when the quality of treatment for those who could afford it was less advanced and the medical safety net was not as frayed. If you've been online for more than ten minutes by now, that means there's a good chance the death toll just ticked up by one. "The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance," said David Himmelstein, co-author of the Harvard study. "Even this grim figure is an underestimate -- now one dies every 12 minutes."

   Now, now...I'm sure that figure is "way over-exaggerated" and our right-wing fellows will have a "counter-study" proving it false...

   provided by "Citizens for Health Freedom"...a subsidiary of the "Council on Economic Liberty"....a sub-division of "Freedom Force"....

   a wholly owned partnership of the America's Health Insurance Plans industry lobbying group.

   Posted by Mask at 10/09/2009 @ 2:50pm

2. 'Now, now...I'm sure that figure is "way over-exaggerated" and our right-wing fellows will have a "counter-study" proving it false...'

   Indeed, "Mask." Moreover, the right wingers do not actually have studies. They have only "counter-studies," which are designed to cast doubt on studies that support liberal policy positions, but which do little to support conservative ones.

   For example, I know of no conservative study that accounts for recent changes in global average temperature by pointing to causes other than greenhouse gases - at least none that wins the support of many scientists. However, there are a great many conservative studies whose purpose is to disparage the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scientists, both inside and outside the specialty of atmospheric research.

   "Global warming isn't real. Or if it is, it's caused by sunspots. Or clouds. Or something like that. We don't know what, but we're pretty certain it can't be human activity."

   The conservatives' attack on health care reform follows the same scattershot lines. They have any number of counter-proposals, some of them incompatible with each other, all based upon counter-theories, which tell us nothing about reality, but which do effectively cast doubt upon every study that sheds any light upon it.

   This skepticism has an important blind spot. For although conservatives are able to doubt even the most obvious of truths, such as our desperate need for health care reform, they cannot doubt that whatever liberals propose must be wrong, and whatever conservatives propose must be right. This goes without saying - until yet another study (like the Harvard study quoted by PNHP) adds support to the liberal view. Then it's time for another counter-study.

   Posted by JakobFabian at 10/09/2009 @ 4:48pm

3. I just don't think it should be a random sampling of Senators. Blue Dogs first (as payment for being disloyal to their President), then Republicans.

   Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/09/2009 @ 4:48pm

4. Slightly less likely than banksters giving back their bonuses in proportion to the losses or bailouts their 'companies' took. Or than generals saying that they can 'win' a war with fewer troops, not more. Or Sarah Palin passing an eighth grade geography test. These things are called one-way functions in mathematics, i.e. things which can never be undone, once started.

   Posted by DejaVu at 10/09/2009 @ 5:13pm

5. The trainloads of feces surrounding the Demoncrats marxist heathcare socialization process is raising a stench that will never wash out!

   Posted by BigPasture at 10/09/2009 @ 5:36pm

6. And just like the insurance companies we can cherry pick those who retain their insurance. Let's cut the insurance of those senators with pre- existing conditions (i.e, stuffed pockets). First up, Baucus, Grassley, Landrieu and Hatch.

   Posted by nkurland at 10/09/2009 @ 6:39pm

7. In reference to the above on Solasr activity being the primry cause of Global Warming: Why are the CO2 icecaps on Mars melting, along with observed heating of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus? I do not accept that Pennsylvania smokestacks or California's cars are the cause. CO2 in Earth's atmosphere is a LAGGING, not a leading indicator of heating. We have quite a way to go to become as warm as the climate was in AD 1100 to 1300. What was the mechanism for that? Please do not pretend that this is a settled issue!

   John D. Froelich

   Posted by balataf at 10/09/2009 @ 7:43pm

8. The multibillion-dollar projection for the Senate healthcare proposal is a government lie that ignores the fact that it would heap additional costs onto states, says best-selling author Martin Gross.

   "The $829 (billion) would be all right, but of course that's a lie," "The government tends to lie almost all the time in regard to money."

   Gross made the comments as he discussed the Congressional Budget Office report projecting that the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare bill would spend $829 billion on healthcare reform while reducing the budget $81 billion over 10 years.

   "They intend to put 15-to-20 million more people on Medicaid," said Gross, has testified six times before congressional committees on the question of waste and spending. "Who picks up the tab? The states. What do states do? They increase property taxes locally. So, this saying they're not going to raise taxes is a total lie, because the unfunded mandates of Medicaid which the states pay most of is off the books."

   Gross, the best-selling author of "The Government Racket," continues his indictment of government waste in his new book, "National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream."

   Gross alleges the government of the United States is a "juggernaut of mismanagement, malfeasance, and incompetence."

   "This is all an attempt to bankrupt the middle class America in the hope of using (the economic) crisis for a socialist revolution, and it seems to be working," Gross said.

   The United States spends $700 billion a year on welfare, Gross said. Costing $8,000 in tax dollars a family, it is a fortune they can't afford, Gross said.

   Posted by BigPasture at 10/09/2009 @ 10:14pm

9. "The poor is becoming middle class, and the middle class is becoming poor. It's a scheme of the federal government (which has) absolutely no interest in the middle class except that they are the golden goose of money."

   "The middle class (is shouldering) the burden," Gross said. "And I tell you this, middle class people can't afford to live in America anymore."

   Gross also criticized President Barack Obama's stimulus package which he also called deceptive.

   For example, he said, "of $787 billion, only $48 billion was appropriated for infrastructure, and the report by the Department of Transportation just this week says $3.5 billion has been spent, but less than 1 percent of stimulus has gone to infrastructure. Where did the rest go? Education: $81 billion wasted. Cities, states to keep on federal, state, and county employees. Meanwhile, the middle class has no work."

   "So, the stimulus is an anti-stimulus. All it does is increase the deficit, and it has no value," Gross said. "If we come back, it's because the business cycle will enable us to come back -- not because of Mr. Obama or the federal government. "

   Posted by BigPasture at 10/09/2009 @ 10:15pm

10. How does DuNcE get out of his house to go to work each day ? Trainloads of his postings are enough to scare honest people. Doesn't Ann Coulter give bonus bucks to post pearls of wisdom. What a schmoo.

    Posted by whatozz at 10/09/2009 @ 11:12pm

11. Posted by whatozz at 10/09/2009 @ 11:12pm | ignore this person | warn this person

    I'm sure you can justify ignoring logic, intelligent analysis, and reason for the blind trust of a fool but that is no reason to chide those not inclined to sip koolaide with you! Drink up big boy and just let those worry's evaporate.

    Posted by BigPasture at 10/09/2009 @ 11:24pm

12. The trainloads of feces surrounding the Demoncrats marxist heathcare socialization process is raising a stench that will never wash out!

    Posted by BigPasture at 10/09/2009 @ 5:36pm

    A good example of why the right-wing crazies cannot be taken seriously.

    Such vitriol shows that "I'm batshit crazy" mindset.

    Posted by erazma at 10/10/2009 @ 07:40am

13. DuNcE, Who posted the trainloads of feces comment. During the summer of 2008 was the economy robust? Were our banks imploding?Was unemployment increasing with a speed seldom seen? How were health costs doing,were they decreasing in cost? You seem to have audacity to go along with inept analysis of the situation. I could care less if the conservatives here don't agree with the bank bailout. The fact of the matter is GWB and Barack felt the economic system would go belly up. This was helped along by the Dick Armey's and Tom Delay's of the world . The Wall Street crowd played with money and created their own rules in relation to that money. The problem is greed and the conservative crowd sits next to the greedy and talks about the individual rights to screw others. Government is bad for attempting to regulate and control you. Yet this same crowd wants to regulate Iraq and Afghanistan in its 21st century nation building exercise. JIm Demint is off to Honduras to check that "territory" out. Maybe he wants to be a modern day Allen Dulles. Let's somehow control Iran(military intervention)? At the same time these conservatives bought their subscriptions to" Borrow from Red China magazine". What did the conservatives estimate the cost of the Bin laden chase to be? Just our standing in the world as an economic superpower? So fast forward to today and realize the Nobel committee gave "our" President an award based on "hope" they had not seen from America in the last 8 years.

    Posted by whatozz at 10/10/2009 @ 08:36am

14. Give it to um whatozz!

    Posted by Denise29 at 10/10/2009 @ 09:58am

15. 'The poor is becoming middle class, and the middle class is becoming poor. It's a scheme of the federal government (which has) absolutely no interest in the middle class except that they are the golden goose of money.'

    Listen to your own propaganda, "Big Pasture." Where are the rich, and what are they doing?

    Apparently, the rich are ... staying rich.

    The obvious reason for this is that they, not the middle class, are regarded - incorrectly, to my mind - as the true "golden goose of money." This is why we tax capital gains so lightly.

    If we taxed capital gains more heavily, we could tax income from work - most of what the middle class makes - more LIGHTLY.

    It should not escape our attention that in "BigPasture's" propaganda, the rich are absolutely invisible. We are not to notice that they exist. We are to assume that if anything is wrong with the world, it is the government's fault. It has nothing to do with this fact, which should be obvious: Our government is beholden to the rich.

    The solutions are: campaign finance reform, full disclosure of endorsements for advertisements, and instant-runoff voting. These reforms are designed to make government once again beholden to voters, rather than to campaign contributors.

    Higher capital-gains taxes wouldn't hurt, either.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 10/10/2009 @ 11:09am

16. Posted by JakobFabian at 10/10/2009 @ 11:09am

    There'a also a major issue with property taxes Namely, if the rates had been more progressive in the first place, property values would have been at more realistic values and thus we could have avoided the bubble, at least in large part.

    Posted by nkurland at 10/10/2009 @ 11:26am

17. In reference to the above on Solasr activity being the primry cause of Global Warming: Why are the CO2 icecaps on Mars melting, along with observed heating of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus? I do not accept that Pennsylvania smokestacks or California's cars are the cause. CO2 in Earth's atmosphere is a LAGGING, not a leading indicator of heating. We have quite a way to go to become as warm as the climate was in AD 1100 to 1300. What was the mechanism for that? Please do not pretend that this is a settled issue!

    John D. Froelich'

    I'm not "pretending that this is a settled issue." I'm claiming that the global warming deniers don't have alternative evidence or alternative explanations.

    Case in point: Your claim about extra-planetary warming.

    (1) Where's the evidence? I'm pretty sure we don't have data for the outer planets (Mars to Uranus) nearly as complete as those generated at the research station at Mauna Loa observatory.

    (2) Where's your explanation? If all these outer planets are heating up, why are they? And why is the earth heating up at a slower rate? By the way, is there any evidence that Mercury and Venus are heating up as well? They should be, given that they are much closer to the sun - and not because of added CO2.

    Here's what "Grist.org" says about the "Medieval Warming Period" (MWP):

    "There is no good evidence that the MWP was a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that exhibited notable warmth -- Europe, for example -- but all global proxy reconstructions agree it is warmer now, and the temperature is rising faster now, than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years.

    Anecdotal evidence of wineries in England and Norse farmers in Greenland do not amount to a global assessment."

    Posted by JakobFabian at 10/10/2009 @ 3:27pm

18. And here's what "Grist.org" says about warming observed on Mars and the outer planets:

    "As for the alleged extraterrestrial warming, there is extremely little evidence of a global climate change on Mars. The only piece I'm aware of is a series of photographs of a single icy region in the southern hemisphere that shows melting over a six year period (about three Martian years).

    Here on earth we have direct measurements from all over the globe, widespread glacial retreat, reduction of sea ice, and satellite measurements of the lower troposphere up to the stratosphere. To compare this mountain of data to a few photographs of a single region on another planet strains credulity. And in fact, the relevant scientists believe the observation described above is the result of a regional change caused by Mars' own orbital cycles, like what happened during the earth's glacial cycles."

    [...]

    "Turning to the outer reaches of the solar system: in the icy cold and lonely Kuiper Belt was observed a difference in Pluto's atmospheric thickness, inferred from two occultation observations 14 years apart. But a cursory glance at Pluto's orbit and atmosphere reveals how ridiculous it is to draw any conclusions about climate, much less climate change, from observations spanning less than even a single season, let alone enough years to even establish the climate's normal state.

    Anyone trying to draw conclusions about what is happening here on earth from all this might as well be from another planet."

    (Thanks to Coby Beck for these handy facts.)

    Posted by JakobFabian at 10/10/2009 @ 3:33pm