Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism and New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof recently repeated a claim that just won’t go away in a recent Op-Ed. It’s a figure cited with abandon by the likes of Congressman Alan Grayson and other single-payer zealots.
Kristof wrote the following in an Op-Ed in which he recounted the experience a man named John Brodniak had with the American health care system:
John’s story is not so unusual. A Harvard study, to be published next month in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that almost 45,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of not having insurance. John may become one of them.
So which group is responsible for this 45,000 figure? That’s right, Physicians For A National Health Program – an organization with a long history of shoddy work in the area of health care “studies.” Unfortunately, their work is picked up by a lot of folks and media personalities whose knowledge of American Idol surpasses their understanding of health care policy.
John Goodman and Linda Gorman thoroughly discredited this sham study here.
Interestingly enough, Goodman and Gorman cite a report which shows that Medicaid patients have a higher mortality rate than the uninsured.
That’s because “coverage” for the sake of coverage doesn’t necessarily equate to access to quality health care. And being “uninsured” doesn’t mean one is going without access to health care.
Moreover, 28 percent of US doctors refuse to accept Medicaid patients. 19 percent will accept a limited amount of Medicaid patients. This is mostly due to the low reimbursement levels of Medicaid. It also bears mentioning that Massachusetts has one of the lowest uninsured rates of all the states. But that statistic is more reflective of the expansion of subsidies, Medicaid enrollment, and the individual insurance mandate. It is not reflective of sound health care policy. Massachusetts has more physicians than any other state but is encountering a growing physician shortage and substantial waiting times to see a doctor or specialist.
Why is this all relevant? Well, the legislation in both the House and Senate would dramatically expand Medicaid, forcing millions more Americans into the government health care system.
As for the rest of the content of Nicholas Kristof’s piece, John Graham has an excellent response here. Michelle Malkin also tears into Kristof’s Op-Ed here.
