{"id":289,"date":"2009-07-28T07:38:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T11:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2021-05-07T16:37:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T20:37:48","slug":"qotd-re-interpreting-that-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/07\/28\/qotd-re-interpreting-that-number\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Re-interpreting that number"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>There have been two trends in US health care over the last decade. On the one hand, a lot of Americans have become, in any rational sense, over-insured: They get tested for things they\u2019ll never get. On the other, there has been an abandonment of health insurance by the rich. If you peel the Census Bureau and DHHS figures, of those alleged \u201c45 million uninsured Americans\u201d, one-fifth aren\u2019t Americans; another fifth aren\u2019t uninsured but are covered by Medicare; another two-fifths are the young and mobile (they don\u2019t have health insurance, but they don\u2019t have life insurance or home insurance, either: they\u2019re 22 and immortal and life\u2019s a party); and the remaining fifth are wealthier than the insured population. Really. According to a 2006 Census Bureau report, 19 per cent of the uninsured have household income of over $75,000. Since the last round of government \u201creform\u201d in the Nineties, wealthy Americans have been fleeing insurance and opting to bring health care back to a normal market transaction. And, if you look at the \u201cuninsured discount\u201d offered by doctors, one can appreciate that, for everything but chronic disability, it\u2019s not an irrational decision to say I\u2019ll get a better deal for my broken leg or my colonoscopy or my heavy cold if I just write a check for it.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Steyn, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/content\/view\/2295\/26\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;The Nationalization of Your Body&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2009-07-28<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been two trends in US health care over the last decade. On the one hand, a lot of Americans have become, in any rational sense, over-insured: They get tested for things they\u2019ll never get. On the other, there has been an abandonment of health insurance by the rich. If you peel the Census [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,66,41,13],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-health-science","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-insurance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65580,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/65580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}