But the science is infused with left-wing politics…

And topped with a secular humanist reduction. Might I suggest you accompany it with a microbrew?

But the science is infused with left-wing politics.

Ah, so when she said the statistic wasn’t true, what she actually meant was “the researchers who formulated the statistic are socialist freedom-haters, so I choose to ignore their findings.”

One of the names of the dead at the alleged Grayson website is “Richard Hurtz.”

Your title says it all.

One of the commenters claimed that illegal aliens skewed the findings.

Dead for lack of health care? Hmph. If only those people had made responsible choices they wouldn’t have died. That’s just the way it goes. Tomorrow’s column – the shocking and evil holocaust that is abortion!

If they hve any dying to do, let them do it now and decrease the surplus population.

-Ebenezer Malkin

Perhaps she will put forth an alternative number of Americans that die every year for lack of health care, and we can discuss with her whether that situation is acceptable.

OMFG the numbers in that study were exagerated to drive home the point of it! That sort of thing has never been done in politics before. This is an outrage! WMD in Iraq! WMD in Iraq! WMD in Iraq!
The difference being that there were no WMD in Iraq, whereas there are people ,whatever the actual number is, dying because they lack health care. And we can do something about it.

Malkinmath:

44 thousand Americans who die because of no health insurance – Bogus statistic.

2 million teabaggers in D.C. on 9/12/09 when every reasonable estimate places the number at 60 or 70 thousand at best – It’s true because I say it is and SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!!!

Is this a visiting Sadlynaught to the Malkinites’ site?

Ted Kennedy (D-Chivas) had the best health care insurance in the world. And yet, he still died. How do Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler explain that?

Also, again:

mal?kin

??/?m?k?n, ?m?l-, ?mæl-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [maw-kin, mawl-, mal-]

–noun British Dialect.

1. an untidy woman; slattern.
2. a scarecrow, ragged puppet, or grotesque effigy.
3. a mop, esp. one made from a bundle of rags and used to clean out a baker’s oven.
4. a cat.
5. a hare.

The fact is, shut up is the only reponse you liberals deserve. Stop hating on the Heartland and Patriots and use some facts and logic for once, liberals only use personal attacks and liberal bias in the media, well we conservatives use reasoned discourse and reality, so SHUT UP.

Hear that, Obots? That’s the sound of us proud Reagan Democrats, us Appalachain Bubbas, our boots marching firmly away from your emotional manipulations and your insulting statistics, the same distortions you used to deny Hillary Clinton the nomination by playing the race card, and us millions in the silent majority will refuse to “play dat, yo”.

Us Heartland Patriots use reasoned discourse and reality!

(blows up federal building)
(bombs clinics)
(shoots cops)
(burns crosses)
(mails anthrax)
(shits in pants)

YOU CANNOT DISPUTE MY REASONING, LIBRUL MONSTROS

We Southern conservatives are the only true patriots. The Heartland is a bunch of sissies who never even went to war with the federal government in order to preserve slavery for plantation owners preserve local state democracy.

After a careful review of the doctors’ kitchen counters, Malkin concludes they are dirty fucking libtards and so can be ignored.

Victory!

Also: The term “Mulkin” causes me to envision a pubic wig on a rampage. Please make it stop.

…your insulting statistics, the same distortions you used to deny Hillary Clinton the nomination by playing the race card

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but wasn’t Hillary Clinton involved with healthcare reform back in the day?

You’d think her alleged supporters would still care about the subject (in a good way, that is) no matter who the President is.

Ok, let’s follow Malkin’s thinking to its conclusion. 44,000 people don’t die every year from lack of insurance. Shall we say “only” 30,000 do? There, now that’s so much better, why bother with health “reform”?

Unless her contention is that a trivial number* of people die from lack of insurance, all she has is an effort to substitute a smaller yet still utterly unacceptable number of insurance deprived deaths for another larger one.

The number is certainly in the 5 figure range whatever the inherent methodological weaknesses of this study.

* – not that there is a “trivial” number of human deaths, but let us say a number smaller than the number that supposedly die from the inefficiencies or ineptitude of UHC and single payer systems

The number is certainly in the 5 figure range whatever the inherent methodological weaknesses of this study.

Even if it weren’t, even if we were to suppose this study is off by as much as a factor of ten. That would still mean we have the equivilent of a 9/11 every year dying because of lack of health care. Now Malkin and all the screaming yellow wankers on the right were 110% behind spending a trillion dollars to prevent another 9/11, so why are they so dead set against spending a mere billion to stop another 9/11.

The number of people who die from lack of health insurance coverage is trivial; not necessarily that the numbers of people are few, but that all of those people would be considered to be trivial, worthless people.

Malkin:

To boil it all down in plain English: The single-payer scientists had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died.

The study sayth:

The hazard ratio for mortality among the uninsured compared with
the insured, with adjustment for age and gender only, was 1.80 (95% CI=1.44,
2.26). After additional adjustment for race/ethnicity, income, education, self- and
physician-rated health status, body mass index, leisure exercise, smoking, and
regular alcohol use, the uninsured were more likely to die (hazard ratio=1.40;
95% CI=1.06, 1.84) than those with insurance.

Malkin is basically contending that all these people who were unable or unwilling to afford insurance between 1988 and 1993 all got insurance between then and 2000, so the fact that they died had nothing to do with anything.

We all know insurance got so much more affordable in that time. Ever more employers offered comprehensive insurance during that time.

So something else must explain that minimum 1.4 factor in death rates among the survey’s uninsured!

Interesting aside: Michelle used to, herself, whine about the cost of health insurance:

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

Her position on health care generally comes down to whining that she doesn’t have enough money for the best stuff, but that she has enough money to get by. All those people who don’t have as much money as she does need to STFU.

Matthew 25:40, indeed.

Malkin is basically contending that all these people who were unable or unwilling to afford insurance between 1988 and 1993 all got insurance between then and 2000

It still wouldn’t matter. All you’d have to clarify is a statistically significant differential mortality rate among people who lacked health insurance between 1988 and 1993, no matter their health insurance status later.

You could even then go on to claim that any significant set of years spent without health insurance increases mortality rates. I.e., via possible mechanisms including not seeking preventive care or tests for conditions which then cause more serious harm later.

She doesn’t realize she’s setting herself up for an even stronger argument.

OT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XivhwO_zWWg&feature=related

If you don’t understand why this is so awful. By the rules of operant conditioning she had to scare the dog away from eating those treats. Which means there are really only two ways of doing that. Injecting ipecac into the treats, or beating it. Judging by the way the eye twitches it’s probably the latter.

If because 40,000 killed yearly due to lack of access to health care in America, we should…?

I’m drawing a blank.

whoa, that was weird. Okay, no more pointy triangular things in posts.

The fact is, freedom Heartland and patriot USA and boners and pie because shut up.

thanks for the handy summary, Scott. I’m makin’ flash cards.

“Let’s see, which reply to make to [local wingnut in local forum]…”

and all I have to do is pull out a card at random.

Oooh, I love it when you unhinge your jaw like taht my sweet little Maniacal Munchkin

OK, so the way I see it is that I have a choice about who to believe, about who I think is the more credible in this matter – the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, or Michelle Malkin?

Hmmmmm, that’s a tough one.

On the one hand, they’re a bunch of physicians and scientists directing the country’s most widely-read and respected (among physicians and scientists working in related fields) and oldest peer-reviewed journal.

And on the other hand, she’s a shrieking harpy who mostly appears on Fox “news” and at her own web site.

Can I get back to you on that one? I really need more time to think this through.

You could even then go on to claim that any significant set of years spent without health insurance increases mortality rates.

Exactly. It is possible that the result confuses correlation with causality. Most people without health insurance don’t have health insurance because they’re either (1) already sick or (2) poor. People who are already sick or poor are more likely to die than people who are not sick and/or rich. However, as arguments against universal health care go, that one is essentially “let them die to reduce the surplus population”.

Can I get back to you on that one? I really need more time to think this through.

Shorter every wingnut everywhere: Scientists who find results I don’t like are biased liberals, even if they are funded by independent agencies and publish in respected peer reviewed journals.

Scientists who find results I like are brilliant searchers for truth, even if they are funded by health insurance companies (or oil companies, or…) and publish in Bought And Paid For Flacks Weekly.

Most people without health insurance don’t have health insurance because they’re either (1) already sick or (2) poor.

Exactly. These are precisely the wrong kind of people for insurance companies to cover anyway, because they may cost more money in their “necessary” medical care, and, well, they’re poor, so you’ll get less money out of them.

And since the purpose of a national health care and health care funding system is to make sure that a small number of insurance companies and heavily subsidized pharmaceutical companies can maximize their profits, it’s pretty clear that these people should die, whether or not the data proves that they actually do.

You know, back in the day, even small-government advocates admitted that the government has to step in and cover market failures. That’s why we managed to build a system of roads, highways, schools, fire and police forces, etc., without a bunch of flabby teabaggers marching in protest and demanding that their Congressmen put a stop to it.

Nowadays, small-government advocates just shriek “NO! THERE IS NO MARKET FAILURE!”

Dead for lack of health care? Hmph. If only those people had made responsible choices they wouldn’t have died. That’s just the way it goes. Tomorrow’s column – the shocking and evil holocaust that is abortion!

Hey, at least in both cases they’re willing to offer their valuable advice.

You know, back in the day, even small-government advocates admitted that the government has to step in and cover market failures.

That was when they were semi-conversant with basic economics.

Nowadays, small-government advocates just shriek “NO! THERE IS NO MARKET FAILURE!”

If only the teabaggers were bright enough to articulate their beliefs coherently, they would realize they’re advocating this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Is it me, or are McMegan’s fan-boy commenters a bunch of racist lunatics?

the silent majority will refuse to “play dat, yo”.

Michael Steele? Is that you?

The term “Mulkin” causes me to envision a pubic wig on a rampage.

A ram-page? Was it a “.co.nz” website by any chance?

You liberals with your research and statistics, and your evaluation of best policies based on that information. Why, next thing you know, there will be no place in our politics for screamers and would-be-bullies. And then where would be? I’ll tell you where … HitlerCommieSharia, that’s where!

Once we have health insurance reform, hopefully with a robust public option and something approaching universal coverage, how quickly will Mulkinites start making up numbers demonstrating that people are dying because they now have insurance?

“Pentagon to use cyborg flies to spy on people.”

http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/10/pentagon-to-use-brain-dead-cyborg.html

I thought the scary black man was making FEMA camps for Michelle and her ilk? When is that going to happen because I am sick of her bullshit.

O/T: Are we ever gonna get an 18th-century Malkin-tent, or does she make enough terrifying faces to render ‘Shops unnecessary?

MM would work better as a harpy/demon in some of that 14th &15th century stuff.

Weird demon-infested 14th / 15th-century art? Say it isn’t so.

boners and pie

Veiled Jason Biggs reference.

Weird demon-infested 14th / 15th-century art? Say it isn’t so.

Could K-Lo be the real wife of Vigo the Carpathian?

I have to warn you all, 100% of Canadians who die were covered by socialized healthcare!!!

Wow.

“Nyah nyah nyah, it’s not 44,000 dead every year – it’s only, like, 42,800 tops” is actually the strongest healthcare argument I’ve heard from a wingnut in quite some time. Get me my smelling-salts & drag me to the fainting-couch: Malkin may actually be technically right!

I don’t think she cares much that her “victory” is Pyrrhic either – as long as she gets to carve another gotcha-notch in her Humorless Dildo O’ Truthiness, that’s all that matters.

I think it kinda helps wingnuts when the limbo-bar they have to wiggle under is set 15 feet up.

Malkin has the math exactly backwards. She’s making a good argument (one the authors of the study clearly understand) that not having insurance may be quite a bit WORSE than the study suggested.

http://thingmadeofstuff.blogspot.com/2009/10/math-is-hard-lets-go-right-wing.html

She does a great impression of a rabid chipmunk, but that doesn’t make her Squirrel Girl, either.

(Squirrel Girl is pretty badass.)

She does a great impression of a rabid chipmunk, but that doesn’t make her Squirrel Girl, either.

It took me decades to get that “The Wasp” was kind of a joke.