one reason people are fucking stupid

christiefan915 said:
Only if you put your faith in unscientific polling.

"Several Fox News media figures highlighted a recent Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll which found that "[t]wo of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted." However, according to statistician Nate Silver, the poll is "simply not credible," and Fox News itself acknowledged that the poll is "not scientific."

1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and th quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one is not intending to be objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that.

Silver added: "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

fnc-20090916-poll.jpg
Click to expand...

There must be something to it, since the doctors with whom I have been speaking are saying the same thing.:BKick:
 
TuTu Monroe said:
There must be something to it, since the doctors with whom I have been speaking are saying the same thing.:BKick:
Click to expand...

Some doctors here are saying the opposite. :tongout:

"Hi. My name is Scott Tyson. I'm a pediatrician and small business owner in Allegheny County.

I'm here to ask that you do everything in your power to fix the disaster that is health care in Pennsylvania today. H.R. 676 is critical to the well being of our country, and I truly believe that this is the most important piece of legislation today.

Our health care system is in a shambles. More and more time is spent on processing care, not providing care. Due to the increase in costs, people have asked for a solution; and managed care was that solution. And this was the beginning of the end. Managed care paid physicians a fixed fee. The patients paid nothing more than the premium to their insurer and were promised by the insurer that they would not need to pay for their care. It was a system that was created by the insurer and began the destruction of the health care system.

As increases in costs slowed, the insurer took more and more control. Then, after getting concessions from physicians and hospitals, maximally, it became apparent that this was not enough to stop cost growth, due to technological advances. Costs began to rise again, and so the patient was blamed for over-utilization.

The next answer was to increase the cost to the patient by jacking up co-pays. Since there was only a finite amount that the co-pays could be increased, this answer was limited. The new answer is health savings accounts. This is essentially the exact same system that existed in the '80s, except there is a huge deductible; costs and reimbursement are arbitrary and virtually impossible to understand. The insurers now ask that the patients bear the cost of the bulk of their care, as they did in the '80s. Only today, there is no reason to charges, virtually no one knows the cost of procedures, and it is impossible to understand the complexity to the system. My only hope is that this newest solution is so fundamentally flawed, so complex, and so damaged that it might be the final critical step to force our country to a national health care system.

I believe today that you have before you a task that is essential to our well being. We need to save the health care system. We need to take control back from the insurers. Highmark made 300 million dollars profit this year, on top of a 2.3 billion dollar reserve. We need to save the health care system. We need to give it back to the patients and the physicians. Please ask that everyone nationally support H.R. 676. Speak to your friends, write to your local and national papers, your legislators, and recognize that, if things can change this much in ten years in the wrong direction, then they can change again. Only, this time, in the right direction.

http://www.kyhealthcare.org/voices/scott_tyson
 
christiefan915 said:
Some doctors here are saying the opposite. :tongout:

"Hi. My name is Scott Tyson. I'm a pediatrician and small business owner in Allegheny County.

I'm here to ask that you do everything in your power to fix the disaster that is health care in Pennsylvania today. H.R. 676 is critical to the well being of our country, and I truly believe that this is the most important piece of legislation today.

Our health care system is in a shambles. More and more time is spent on processing care, not providing care. Due to the increase in costs, people have asked for a solution; and managed care was that solution. And this was the beginning of the end. Managed care paid physicians a fixed fee. The patients paid nothing more than the premium to their insurer and were promised by the insurer that they would not need to pay for their care. It was a system that was created by the insurer and began the destruction of the health care system.

As increases in costs slowed, the insurer took more and more control. Then, after getting concessions from physicians and hospitals, maximally, it became apparent that this was not enough to stop cost growth, due to technological advances. Costs began to rise again, and so the patient was blamed for over-utilization.

The next answer was to increase the cost to the patient by jacking up co-pays. Since there was only a finite amount that the co-pays could be increased, this answer was limited. The new answer is health savings accounts. This is essentially the exact same system that existed in the '80s, except there is a huge deductible; costs and reimbursement are arbitrary and virtually impossible to understand. The insurers now ask that the patients bear the cost of the bulk of their care, as they did in the '80s. Only today, there is no reason to charges, virtually no one knows the cost of procedures, and it is impossible to understand the complexity to the system. My only hope is that this newest solution is so fundamentally flawed, so complex, and so damaged that it might be the final critical step to force our country to a national health care system.

I believe today that you have before you a task that is essential to our well being. We need to save the health care system. We need to take control back from the insurers. Highmark made 300 million dollars profit this year, on top of a 2.3 billion dollar reserve. We need to save the health care system. We need to give it back to the patients and the physicians. Please ask that everyone nationally support H.R. 676. Speak to your friends, write to your local and national papers, your legislators, and recognize that, if things can change this much in ten years in the wrong direction, then they can change again. Only, this time, in the right direction.

http://www.kyhealthcare.org/voices/scott_tyson
Click to expand...

The difference is, I spoke to them directly. :tongout:
 
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