On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:36:41 -0800, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:35 -0800, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

I still hate to trust a statistic like this without a little more
information about where the data came from, what was the most
prevalent causes of death and things like that.
Bad things tend to happen to poor people more than the more affluent.



80%+ who have no health ins. are working and above the poverty line.
This
has been known for quite some time.

It still doesn't answer my question. Who dies in the ER's they polled
and what was the cause of death?
If these were inner city public hospitals I am sure violence and drugs
are the major cause of death in the ER.
Are they saying, if you have insurance they take you upstairs to die?
I am just not sure someone was not cherry picking data to advance an
agenda.

If you are saying gangsters, hookers and drug addicts have a horrible
benefit plan, I agree. Most of their victims do too.


I'm not sure what you're asking... are you seriously asking if most of the
ER patients are criminals? Few would have insurance, but I don't see what
difference that would make.

I am just curious about all the dueling statistics I hear.
They said a week or so ago that 47000 people without insurance die
every year, Sarah Brady says 43,000 people are shot every year, how
many of those overlap? Toss in the ODs and it is easy to see why I may
be skeptical of the statistics as any kind of valid barometer.
I did this kind of work at IBM, trying to figure out why the reports
we were running our business with did not match the reality and most
of the time it was either that they were cherry picking the data or
that the input data itself was corrupt in order to make a short term
"number" look good.
In the case of ER stats, I would not be shocked to see them diddling
the inputted data to get their daily and monthly reports and payments
on track.


I believe the number is closer to 100K per year in the US. I'm not enough of
a statistician to figure out who's got ins. and who doesn't. Most of the
people who show up in ERs are employed, just as 80% who showed up in the
recent free clinics were employed. I don't think any of them were shooting
victims.

Oh yes they were, every single one -- if you count tetanus and
vaccinations.