Last night on the O'Reilly Factor, Bill turned to the audience letters. From Peter in Canada: "Has anyone noted that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?" Bill wasn't phased, but he did use some creative math to answer. "Well Peter, that's to be expected," he said, "we have ten times as many people as you do!"
There is actually an interesting point here: up to a certain point, population density decreases your life expectancy quite dramatically. But I'm pretty sure that Bill O'Reilly was not making that interesting point. I'm pretty sure he was saying something incredibly innumerate.
How do you know he wasn't thinking of population density? I'm not particularly a fan of Bill O'Reilly but that would be my first inference before assuming innumeracy.
Huh? What he says is correct, but he isn't bright because you're just so sure he didn't mean to make that point?
Sorry, you lost me here. I don't know a whole lot about O'Reilly, but the post seems entirely intended to express your distaste for him, even if what he says in this case is true.
If I'm reading you right, he didn't really say WHY the 10x figure would be relevant to the conversation. So it's kinda a moot point to say whether he was bright or stupid.
He could've been making any number of points, but we have no idea because he didn't elucidate.
I agree with solarflux, in part. I suspect Bill was actually commenting on the homogeneity of Canada vs. the diversity of America's population (not that he was necessarily correct that some cohorts in America would so skew the life expectancy downwards).
The thing of it is that elitists like you Megan (I think you're really a nice person, but "if the shoe fits ...") tend to look down your noses at the "lower classes" -- witness your disapproval of the former governor of Alaska.
You're not old enough to remember the adulation of Adlai Stevenson by the upper classes, vs. "I Like Ike". The rap against Eisenhower was that he was often maddeningly inarticulate while Stevenson was wont to let his prose soar. Of course, Stevenson was an empty suit and wasn't particularly well read (George Will said of him, "The only book beside his bed when he died was the Social Register").
My point is that you elitists are all to quick to judge character and intelligence by one's ability to speak extemporaneously. This is ok for a first impression (a good predictor of native intelligence is one's command of his native language -- but it's not conclusive!).
Yes, Bill is a blowhard. Yes, he does bluster and opine when he's wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. But, stop nitpicking. And do a little more soul searching for the reasons you so hate Sarah.
The 'elitest' label is so hysterical when it is used to defend a moron like Palin because it doesn't take an 'elitest' to see through her foolishness.
One simple question for you. Take all the ridiculous things Palin said during the campaign and imagine for one second that Obama had said them -- can you honestly say you would not have condemned him as the stupidest man alive?
So maybe you should do some soul searching for the reasons you so love Sarah...
"My point is that you elitists are all to quick to judge character and intelligence by one's ability to speak extemporaneously. This is ok for a first impression (a good predictor of native intelligence is one's command of his native language -- but it's not conclusive!)."
It's an excellent predictor of your ability to be a successful politician -- look at a simple slip by Obama on the Gates incident that has caused a firestorm -- can you imagine how frequent these slips would occur with Palin as a national leader -- she would be worse than Bush.
Nobody has accused Biden of being the stupidest man alive. I'm not a particular fan of Sarah Palin (other than the fact that she clearly elevates the level of hotness in politics), but why are people so offended by a less than qualified female when they don't bat an eye at less than qualified males?
Whereas Obama smooth-talked the teleprompter all the way through his campaign, got elected on borderline messianic sentiments, then promptly revealed his utter lack of administrative experience by, say, jumping up to voice a media-ready opinion on the Cambridge police and professor teapot temptest, for which he didn't even know all the facts and certainly didn't have purview.
Elect a politician, get a politician, blah blah blah. Obama's a politician, and so is Palin, and neither one of them shows more or less grasp of the obvious than the other. It is amusing to see that Palin seems to have such a firm grip on the minds of her detractors, though. Maybe she shares a mind meld with Karl Rove?
What an excellent point that the choice between Palin and Obama is like that between Eisenhower and Stevenson. I sometimes cringe when I hear Palin talk. In terms of verbal ability she's far, far below Obama, but in terms of actions, she's done more and better things than Obama had done when he began running for President. One has actually fought against corruption while the other did nothing more than keep his own hands mostly clean, for the sake of his ambitions, while winking at the rampant corruption around him. One got things done and was pretty true to her promises when she got into office, while the other campaigned for the Senate as someone who would reach across the aisle and change the tone of Washington, but made no effort in that direction once in office.
It's style vs. substance.
Honesty and stupidity aren't mutually exclusive. Might even be that the dumber she is the more honest she has to be because she lacks the brainpower to keep her lies straight. Just because she's always honored her word and got things done doesn't make her any less of a nit-wit.
I thought "wasn't well read" was an interesting point coming from a Palin supporter ala can't cite a single publication she reads when prompted, and prompted, and prompted...Bueller.
It's not style vs. substance that separates Obama and Palin, it's about a 50 point IQ differential. I'm not a big Obama fan, but behavior can be monitored and corrected whereas stupid is forever.
What "homogeneity" of Canada's population? Canada is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world.
http://www41.statcan.gc.ca/2007/30000/ceb30000_000-eng.htm
Megan,
The percentage of Americans living in urban areas (>200000 people) is 58%. Care to guess what it is in Canada?
You implied that density is lower in Canada. It's not - 90% of the country is uninhabited.
Stated another way, Canada has about 33.5m people, and an estimated 75% of them live within 90 miles of the ConUS-Canadian border. The border is about 1500 miles long, so doing straight-line average approximations, we get:
1500 * 90 = 135,0000 sq-miles in the dense zone
33.5m * 75% = 25.125m persons in the dense zone
25.125m / 135,000 = 186.11 persons/sq-mile
Nearly 45% of these (and 33% of the total population) can be readily accounted for in dense urban/suburban areas, as the greater Toronto area holds an estimated 5.5m, Montreal holds another 3.6m, and Calgary has another 1.1m, followed by 650k in Winipeg and 350k in Ottawa.
Stated another way, Canada has about 33.5m people, and an estimated 75% of them live within 90 miles of the ConUS-Canadian border.
I don't know why we allow this sort of belligerent behavior to continue unpunished. If the Germans moved 75% of their population to the French border, there'd be hell to pay.
Annex Canada today!
It's frakkin cold up there - the icebacks are just huddled up for warmth.
Mouse -
The 2006 census reported Ottawa at 1.05 million. And you left Vancouver, Edmonton and Quebec City off the list.
At any rate, 64% of Canadians live in cities of 100,000 or more. Roughly the same as the US.
The border is more like 3,000 miles long, isn't it?
Close to the border...where they can cross and get tests and treatment instead of dying and becoming disabled on waiting lists in their own country.
You can buy wait list insurance in Canada.
http://www.acurehealth.com/
The Canadian longevity is partly accomplished by the United States.
Pop quiz:
What is the difference in life expectancy between Canada and the US?
Can't comment on Bill O'Reilly, I don't watch him.
Oh for cripes sake, not that idiocy again.
Canadians do NOT flock across the damn border for care. The insurance lobby invented that little fairy tale in the 90s the last time health care reform was on the table to scare people away from anything resembling a universal public care system.
Here's the thing... when they did that someone decided to actually study if it was true. Imagine that?
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/19
18,000 Canadians surveyed. A whopping 90 had received care in the US in the previous year. A whole 0.5%. And most of THOSE people just happened to be traveling in the US when they got sick or injured and needed care before returning home.
They scoured hospitals on the US side for all these Canadian patient admissions that were supposed to be over-running the places. No sign of them. A few here, a handful there... that's it. Of course as soon as a Us insurance lobbyist gets their hands on one of that handful their story will be spread far and wide as possible while it is represented as an ordinary everyday occurrence for the average Canadian to be crossing the border for medical treatment.
And NOTHING has changed since then to alter that situation.
It is a pack of lies, and it gets swallowed whole by an amazing number of people in the US.
And as for waiting lists... well, if you throw millions of people out of the system be making coverage too expensive for them to obtain, restrict care for tens of millions more by foisting off insurance plans on them that end up not covering anything costly to sufficient degree for THEM to afford the care they should be getting, and then put an army of lawyers and accountants to work trying to figure out how to disqualify any insured people who actually are covered for those things if it turns out they actually end up needing them... yeah, the doctor's waiting room is going to be less crowded I imagine. Hurray! Less waiting! Because you see people not getting the care they should be getting AT ALL aren't "waiting" for care! Waiting list problem solved! Pure genius! The US system is clearly BRILLIANT!
And then you can proceed to pretend none of those things happen, so you can tell people your system doesn't ration care. No sir. It's only those other systems that do that and that's terrible!
Grant, you are certainly correct about the fact that the placement of the US doesn't materially alter the healthcare outcomes in Canada, but I would say that it is *extremely* useful in allowing us to maintain the system we do have.
The .01% of Canadians who do use the American healthcare system are a lot more wealthy, and thus a lot more politically powerful than the rest. Having a second tier that the very wealthy can get easy access to, yet is far enough away that the vast majority of Canadians don't use it means that the Canadian system serves almost all Canadians *and* is not a threat to the elite.
I suspect this helps account for its longevity and its success.
Um, in some cases the various Provincial Health ministries actually send Canadians across the border when there isn't a bed available in a nearby part of Canada. Basically the US health industry is providing the elasticity that the Canadian system lacks. Also, it makes more sense to send a Vancouverite to Seattle than to Quebec City, since while Canada has a national healthcare regime, it is run on a provincial basis, since a system with 33 million people would be totally unwieldy (oh, hi California!).
I think that the centrally-planned parts is one of the worst parts of the Canadian system - hospitals respond to budgets and plans, not patients/clients. By this I mean that a hospital will have X number of NNICU beds, because that is what is in the budget, and if too many babies show up, they will go to another hospital, or to Buffalo, NY. An American hospital will generally add more beds, since it can be confident that the extra babies will translate into extra revenue.
Jesus Christ, did any of you watch the clip or did you just start typing? O'Reilly says that life expectancy is higher in Canada because the US has 10x more people... "that translates to 10x as many accidents, crimes, [and] down the line..."
If the only difference between the US and Canada was that the US had 10x more people and, exactly, 10x as many accidents, crimes, etc, I'm fairly certain that means that US and Canadian life expectancies would be equal. That's the problem with what he said.
And how the hell does one bring Sarah Palin into this?
No, we just all blindly pontificated over every hypothetical situation that would make Megan wrong.
When the facts are inconvenient, we ignore them.
Aah, that's what I thought. For some reason, I felt compelled to ask.
O'Reilly committed a huge gaffe. What he says makes no sense. If he was right and a country's population affected life expectancy, smaller countries would have higher life expectancy than big ones. Hey, the chinese would die in their thirties and the U.S.A. could increase its life expectancy tremendously by simply splitting the states into 50 countries.
It seems that some of you may like him, but come on! do not defend everything this rude man says. If he was referring to something else, as some suggest he did, he should have said so. Also, remember that he picks the letters he reads in the show, so he had time to draft a proper comment to read from the teleprompter. I just wonder why no one in his staff did not point out the mistake (maybe they are afraid of him).
Megan is right; O'Reilly is a complete clutz whenever numbers are involved. A self-righteous clutz, too.
It's not as if this question surprised him. It's his show. He screens every question, prepares an answer, etc.
For him to answer this particular question the way he did is ignorant, at best. He didn't mention population density. He didn't mention urbanization. He didn't mention access to care (the inverse of density - when you live 100 miles from the nearest nurse, that's a factor (pun intended))
He didn't mention any of these.
All he said was "we have 10 times as many people as you do, and that means 10 times as many accidents, crimes, etc."
Aside from the whole "linearity" thing that his answer implies, thus shooting his own logic in the foot, there's the simple fact that it's wrong. We've covered most of the reasons here. The problem is that O'Reilly didn't.
Expecting anything mildly intelligent to come out of O'Reilly's mouth is like expecting your dog to spontaneously bark the Star Spangled Banner.
And expecting an intelligent word to leave Palin's lips is somewhere up there with expecting your dog to fart Beethoven’s 5th.
Coming from you, Paul, that means a lot. You've completely changed my opinion, not only of the person this thread is about, but about the completely unrelated person this thread has nothing to do with.
You betcha!!! No more blogging as usual, I'm here to protect the Joe-Six-Pack bloggers from all those darn blogger insiders. After all that's what a maverick does...Did I mention I'm a maverick too?
Actually I can't really take credit for bringing the airhead into the conversation, read (or re-read or if you're a Palin fan don't bother reading as I hear it's overrated anyways) above. But glad to be of service all the same. You betcha!!
Don't ask me to defend this in detail, but I would expect that for at least the opening bars, randomly farting Beethoven’s 5th is a higher probability event than randomly barking the opening bars to the Star Spangled Banner.
Fair enough. I think reasonable people could make an argument on either side as to which one's the bigger dufuss so it works either way. In fact, to be complete you should probably throw Glen Beck in for a true moronathon. Kind of a thinking man's panel for people who don't like to think.
I will of course claim credit for bringing in a 3rd unrelated person and I'm dedicating it to Squid. Thanks and you're welcome.
Does someone have a transcript or a clip of the entire segment?
I’m not a fan of Bill O’Reilly but I’m even less likely to believe something from a sixteen second clip edited by Media Matters.
Oh, so that's why Mongolians live forever, and Monaco has the lowest life expectancy in the world.
O'Reily's response is completely irrelevant. Asserting that population (even population density) is the main reason for the life expectancy disparity is absurd. Pointing to one obvious factor like obesity would have been satisfactory but then again Bill OReily is not very bright.
Did anyone see Glenn Beck say Obama hates whites people or white culture? Hilarious. Keep up the good work Fox News, your making America proud.
CNN built Beck as a TV personality :)
What's impressive to me is that Fox has continued to dominate the TV ratings for years now, despite the rise of the blathering talking head at other networks trying to de-throne it.
recall that credibility/status as processed by humans is less about content of one's speech and more about body language, voice tone/characteristics and established track record - O'Reilly could have responded with any number of non sequiturs and his viewership would have lapped it up - it's not like people tune in to fire up their cynicism/skepticism eh? people like to believe and know/feel that they are part of a larger group of like-minded folks
innumeracy is also an underpinning factor for why retail brokerage and finance are SO profitable
carry on
"fazed", not "phased". If Capt. Kirk stuns you, that's when you're "phased".
Not that I'm looking for a reason to defend Bill O'Reilly, but I originally read it to mean, "a healthcare system that can extend life expectancy in Canada won't necessarily extend life expectancy in a nation with a population that is 10x it's size."
So, in my theoretical construct, he's not claiming that population density directly effects life expectancy, he's claiming that the appropriate healthcare solution is dependent on population density (at least in orders of magnitude).
It should also be said that, in my theoretical construct, it is this group that is being rather innuemrate...
Pop quiz answers.
Differences in life expectancy between Canada and the US:
2.28 years including both sexes
1.83 males
2.89 females
Oh, outrage!
The developed world clusters together with reasonable life expectancies, and the standard deviations aren't posted but those would be rather telling. And why does France report metro only?!
Then look at #146 through the end of the list. In Africa, do they throw you a big party if you make it to menopause?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Macau is kicking Canada's ass. Why aren't the Canadians outraged?!
We're planning the invasion as we speak, but shhh... it's a secret.
What an interesting list! I've only visited Macau to shop for antiques (like my 'late Ching dynasty' cabinet designed to hold DVDs; those Chings were very far-sighted). But I lived in Hong Kong for 6 years and had a fair amount of experience with the healthcare system there. Hong Kong (along with Macau, Singapore and Japan) ranks above the various European countries with universal health care, but HK's long life expectancy is not due to a superior health care system.
The list is a good reminder that there are many factors driving the relatively small differences in life expectancy among the top 50 or so countries.
You can buy wait list insurance in Canada.
http://www.acurehealth.com/
Thanks kentuckyliz. I'm Canadian and didn't know this was available, but I'll be pricing it out. If my Mom had had this a couple of years ago, it would have saved her a lot of pain. (I think private medical insurance is illegal in my province, but hopefully they get around that by only having it apply after you've been waitlisted. Or maybe we just get to keep crossing out fingers and hoping for the best).
Their site is right - if you're a Canadian, you will be waitlisted at some point. You just have to hope it's just for something inconvenient, not life-threatening. Or that you can afford to go to the US and pay out of your own pocket, as many do.
You mean like many of us here in the US have to do for EVERY procedure?
Trust me, if you lived in our system the way that I do- full-time employed, college educated, but with no health insurance for going on 9 years now- you'd run right back across the border. It's scary. Every little pain you feel, every time you get sick, could be financial ruin. I constantly have to ask myself- okay, so if this is something serious, should I go to the doctor, or should I try and wait it out to see if I get insurance soon? Because if I go and get it treated out of pocket, even if I get insurance tomorrow THEY WON'T COVER IT! It's called a pre-existing condition.
And I've tried to go out into the wonderful "free marketplace" and buy insurance. And no insurance company will let me pay them for insurance. They deny me the ability to give them money! Know why? My hip hurt once 10 years ago and my doctor didn't take an X-Ray. "Coverage denied due to Undiagnosed Hip Condition" Awesome!
Want to trade health insurance with me? Can't say no now, you've stated for all the world to see that you would. No take-backs!
I wonder what Dr. Barak's prescription to 'take the blue pill' so we don't spend so much on end-of-life care will do to life expectancy in the U.S.
Shangri-La has the longest life expectancy,
if you call their lifestyle living. As for me:
"Dum vivamus, vivamus !"
Ireland's stats are due to stress; Country folk
are living the near-Neolithic lifestyle to which
humanity is adapted, as opposed to the
"Life Out of Balance" in the cities.
Canada's population is homogeneous (code word);
Sorry, Norman Rogers, but the stats are clear
on that one; If the US were "homogeneous" our
LE and crime stats would be ~ English.
Yeah, O'Reilly is an idiot.
The discrepancy between U.S. and Canadian life expectancies is actually pretty easily explained, though. If you adjust life expectancies in OECD countries for the differing rates of death through trauma, the U.S. suddenly has the longest life expectancies of any OECD country. A death of a 16-year-old in a gang shooting drags down averages a lot, and it's a lot more likely to happen in America than in Canada.
Nobody has yet explained to me how universal health coverage is going to reduce violent crime among people in their teens and twenties in the U.S. And as long as we have a lot more people getting shot, stabbed, and beaten than other developed countries, our population-wide life expectancy is going to be lower.
That's not true. We've been here before - if you adjust for trauma, you get something like a 6 months gain. The U.S. would still trail the vast majority of developed countries.
Is that why Ontario is rapidly importing various Jamaican and Somali street gangs? Trauma envy?
If you adjust life expectancies in OECD countries for the differing rates of death through trauma, the U.S. suddenly has the longest life expectancies of any OECD country.
I've heard it corrects for some of the variation, but doesn't come close to closing it.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a source for either position, so we would actually know instead of just speculating....
Yeah, sorry. Took me a while to hunt it back down.
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/09/natural-life-expectancy-in-united.html
Lunatic: In the table you link to, why do the life expectancies of some countries decrease after fatal injuries are accounted for? That doesn't seem to make sense. What am I missing?
If we look at WHO tables for 2006, and assuming I'm reading them right, we find the following number of expected extra years of life at birth, at 40-44 years of age, and at 65-69 years of age:
U.S.A.: 78.0, 40.0, 18.8
Canada: 80.6, 42.0, 19.7
Japan: 82.6, 43.7, 21.4
"If you adjust life expectancies in OECD countries for the differing rates of death through trauma, the U.S. suddenly has the longest life expectancies of any OECD country. A death of a 16-year-old in a gang shooting drags down averages a lot, and it's a lot more likely to happen in America than in Canada."
Where did you get this data? I'm looking at OECD life expectancy at age 65, and Canada still has an advantage over the US as do many of the other OECD countries. The 16 year old getting shot doesn't affect life expectancy at 65 and the US doesn't look better than Canada, Switzerland, Spain or Italy among others. And that's where you'd expect our high-tech medicine to kick in and show some boost in life expectancy.
How does the data deal with 15 million illegals, many living in 3rd world conditions? And will they be covered by Baracare?
Life expectancy is from Census data, which doesn't count illegals.
The Census counts everyone, including illegals. Here's what they say about it at their website:
"Given the success of Census 2000 in counting nearly every person residing in the United States, we expect that unauthorized migrants were included among people who indicated that the United States was their usual place of residence on the survey date. The foreign-born population includes naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary migrants (e.g., foreign students), humanitarian migrants (e.g., refugees), and unauthorized migrants (people illegally present in the United States)."
...which we estimate by using the Residual Method.
I expect that the deficit in life expectancy in the US is a consequence of excessive dental treatment.
Lunatic is right, but volitional trauma among minority youth is only part of the story. There's also the fact that black adults suffer very high rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension and check out from stroke and heart disease much earlier than the rest of the U.S. adult population. Depending on the source, black adult life expectancy is 5 - 7 years less than for most of the rest of the U.S. adult population. Add that into the youth trauma differential and the alleged U.S. life expectancy disadvantage goes away.