Life according to Gordon

It bothers me a lot when people intentionally misquote things or include false or highly misleading statistics to promote their own agenda. There's nothing wrong with trying to promote your own agenda, but if you're going to do it, don't lie or make up statistics out of thin air. This post is going to focus on a recent false statistic used in the current American health care debate. First, so you know where I'm coming from: I believe the public option is already a major concession; what we really need is true universal health care--just like every other developed nation in the world. But if we're going to have to compromise, the public option is what we need. It is the loving, Christian thing to do. I do not trust corporations to magically "do the right thing" after a little prodding with tort reform. In fact that's downright delusional. But my own opinions aside, I want this post to focus on some recent statistics I've come across.

Awhile ago, you may have seen a so-called public service announcement circulating on the internet with a number of celebrities sarcastically decrying Obama's new plan for being harmful to health insurance CEOs and fat-cats. On the off-chance that you haven't already seen it, I have it re-posted here.

Then, earlier tonight I saw that a friend had posted a similar video she had dug up on her Facebook page, presumably the Republican response to this video. I have also included this one for you here.

Now wait a second, did the second video just claim (around 1:10) that 71% of doctors actually oppose the public option? Wait, what? Hearing that statistic made me do a double-take. Especially since I remembered hearing multiple times, through multiple news outlets, that somewhere around 70% of doctors support the public option. I ran a quick Google search. Sure enough, article after article citing figures wavering around 70% in support from physicians. Did they really just flip that statistic on its head? Would they genuinely be that downright deceitful, by saying the exact opposite of what polls showed? I had to find out more, so I've done my research and I'm prepared to cite all my sources. I'll let you be the judge.

First, it is true that 72.5% of physicians SUPPORT the public option. This data comes from a scientific study titled "Doctors on Coverage -- Physicians' View on a New Public Insurance Option and Medicare Expansion," which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. You can read the full study yourself. More specifically, 62.9% of physicians support a system that includes the public option alongside with the existing private insurance companies, while an additional 9.6% of physicians said they supported a system that used the public option only--in other words, true Universal Health Care. Since these two groups are supporting a public option in one form or another (and yes, they are mutually exclusive in the study), we find that 62.9 + 9.6 = 72.5% of physicians support the public option.

So where'd this supposed 71% figure in the second video come from? I did some more digging, and found an article in a newspaper called the Investors' Business Daily (IBD) conducting a survey by mail of some physicians. They asked the question, "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better?" They claim 71% of their respondents answered "no," although they admit in the article that they hadn't finished fully collecting surveys before publishing their results. I continued to do research, and found that the IBD poll is completely unscientific and not in any way credible. To explain why, and to include some other things to consider, I offer the following succinct bullet-point list.

• The New England Journal of Medicine is the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world, and is the most widely read, cited, and influential medical journal in the world.
• The New England Journal of Medicine is a professional, peer-reviewed medical journal. The survey they conducted is extremely well documented and follows the standard professional methodology for conducting scientific surveys.
• The Investors' Business Daily is a newspaper with an agenda. The article does not disclose any of their polling methods, and admits that they did not finish collecting all the responses before publishing the results. There is no peer review process whatsoever. They have a primarily conservative audience, and they conducted a mail-in survey.
• The question used in the Investors' Business Daily poll is a long run-on sentence. It is multi-faceted, biased, and leading. It would never be regarded as a good question to ask in any sort of scientific study. But it is a great question for writing biased newspaper articles. Asking "do you believe the government can do it?" (what they asked) is very different from asking "are you for or against the public option?" For example, a physician might strongly support the public option, but also no longer believe the government can do it--because the Republican senators have been blocking it. He would have to respond with "no" to the IBD question, despite supporting the public option.
• The Investors' Business Daily is already infamous for publishing poll results that are wildly inaccurate. For instance, in October of 2008--just one month before the presidential election--they published poll results that claimed 74% of American voters between the ages of 18 to 24 were going to vote for John McCain. This did not happen. This did not come anywhere close to happening. That age group voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.

You can draw your own conclusions, but personally I trust the results of a scientific, peer-reviewed study published in the most trusted medical journal in the world over the results of mail-in poll run by a newspaper that's already notorious for inaccurate polling. 72.5% of doctors support the public option.