Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Crash on Delivery

In economic terms, the healthcare industry is somewhat like a utility. It has price inelasticity of demand because of necessity: people will pay whatever price is demanded when they require healthcare. The “supply” (medical professionals) is inelastic as well (due to scarcity). The reason insurance is required is that many times when care is needed, the cost can be so prohibitively expensive it can bankrupt you. To put this in layman’s terms (from another sort of Rude Pundit by the name of Cranky Media Guy): ["inelasticities" added]

Health care is not (and cannot become) a free market for two reasons:

1) Supply is artificially restricted [inelastic] by the government and the AMA. The scarcity of medical care drives up the cost. This is completely artificial. You might say “Well, they have to! You can’t have just anyone practicing medicine!” Fine, I agree, but that means that health care CANNOT EVER be a free market, because of the artificial restriction of supply.

2) Not only is supply artificially low, but buyers are under EXTREME compulsion to buy. [price inelasticity of demand] …What, that thought never occurred to you!?!? If you need lifesaving medical care, you either get it or you die!

This is why almost every other industrialized country in the world has some model of universal healthcare—those countries recognized that the healthcare industry does not (and cannot) operate by free market principles. It takes up more of our GDP than any other country by a wide margin, and continues to take up a higher and higher percentage (in September, 2011, it reached 18%), which is a serious national problem in and of itself:

But if health care spending continues on its same trajectory, the United States will reach the point — probably several decades from now — where every penny of the annual increase in gross domestic product would have to go for health care. There would be less and less money for other things, like education, environmental protection, scientific research and national security, that may be equally or more important to the well-being of society.

That all being said, let’s take a look at some of the reasons that John Boehner’s statement that the U.S. has the “best healthcare delivery system in the world” never reaches its destination, even with the help of PolitiFact.

According to a Harvard Medical School Study (American Journal of Public Health, December 2009), lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year in the United States and people without health insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance, a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. In 2010, the percentage of Americans without health insurance was 16.3%, or 49.9 million uninsured people (source: US Census Bureau). It should be over 50 million by now.

And what are some of our healthcare outcomes? Not too good:

In 2005, the United States ranked 30th in infant mortality. In 2011, we rank #50.

Life expectancy at birth in the United States is an estimated 78.49 years, which ranks 50th in highest total life expectancy compared to other countries ( Source: CIA Factbook [2011]).

We have the highest percentage of obese (30.6%) (And guess where it’s the highest in the U.S.?).

We are #13 for most deaths from heart disease per 100,000 people (average is 102.9 and the U.S. is 106.5).

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Politi-Score: "My Bad" Boehner

In my initial review of Eric Ostermeier’s article “Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats” I deduced that he had used PolitiFact National statistics only. As a matter of uniformity, this was probably the most “scientific” way to do it. But because his total number of 511 statements still seemed a little low, and he did not come out and say that this was PolitiFact National, I puzzled over how I could determine it.

Since Speaker of the House John Boehner is from Ohio, I thought I might manually confirm his rulings. Indeed, he had some rulings by PolitiFact National and some by PolitiFact Ohio, here’s how his count worked out for 2010 when he received 21 PolitiFact rulings:

Boehner 2010	PF National	PF Ohio	Total
True	6	4	10
Mostly True	2	0	2
Half True	1	2	3
Barely True	1	0	1
False	3	2	5
Pants on Fire	0	0	0
Total	13	8	21

So right there (in emphasis), as Ostermeier noted, six Trues, two Mostly Trues, and one Half True. Yes, Ostermeier had compiled Boehner’s numbers for PolitiFact National only.

The issue raised for me was the way I had gathered my data for my “2,788 Reasons” series of posts. I accomplished the task by going to the “Other People and Groups” page of the PolitiFact.com website, and linking to each person, and then copying the numbers from the “Statements by Ruling” list. But the issue was that the “Statements by Ruling” do not tell you which PolitiFact group the ruling was done by, and there are some overlaps. The other politico I checked was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, since he is a representative from Virginia, and yes, he had one ruling done by PolitiFact Virginia.

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Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: John Boehner and Finance Reform

In the “Lil White Lies” category, I have been giving structured criticisms of another person’s criticisms of PolitiFact’s ruling write-ups. The assumption is that the purpose of these criticisms (being critiqued), blogged in a very professional style by a conservative, of what he has asserted many times is a liberally biased fact-checking website, helps prove anecdotally its liberal bias.

But perhaps a different approach is warranted. That approach is to use the identical logic to prove what could be conservative bias on the part of PolitiFact. What does that prove? This is what the critiqued critic, Bryan White, might say, coming directly from a comment he posted at the PolitiFact Facebook page very recently (emphasis added):

@ Carol Ahrens, who wrote:

***Politifact is doing a great job! why else would both sides be accusing them of bias?!***

Well, both sides *could* accuse them of bias because they make mistakes--mistakes that sometimes favor one side and sometimes favor the other. But if you throw logic entirely out the window then I guess you can conclude that criticism from both sides simply means that PolitiFact does a great job.

(November 28, approx. noon EST)

Of course, Bryan fails to explain or elaborate (which is typical of his commentary) on “throwing logic entirely out of the window” except to take a jab at Carol Ahrens by implying she is not thinking logically.

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