The Grand Illusion
I listened to Robert F. Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, but could only bear to listen a short time, largely because what I heard revealed that the majority of the Senators and RFK appeared either to suffer from near-complete innumeracy, or were so locked into policy positions that they appeared to suffer terminal innumeracy.
The discussion over national life-expectancy data was more than a little revealing. The life-expectancy for Americans is lower than all other western industrial countries, yet the U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per capita.
There are several reasons for these figures. First, one of the factors lowering average lifespans of a population is high infant mortality, i.e., the death of a child before his or her first birthday. Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. infant mortality rate is fifty-fifth, and is at least twice as high as all other first-world nations. Add to that that the U.S. maternal death rate is close to five times that of all other major industrial countries and is continuing to rise.
The second factor lowering average lifespans is the percentage of the population lacking basic health care. In the U.S., roughly 25 million Americans lack health care insurance and over 100 million do not have a regular health care provider. Yet of those uninsured Americans, 74% have a full-time worker, and another 11% are working part-time. While 62% of uninsured American adults have health care debts, as might be expected, 44% of Americans with health insurance also reported health care debts.
When roughly a third of the U.S. population does not have a regular health care provider and almost half the population cannot afford even routine health care without going into debt, one might think these factors just possibly might contribute to a lower life expectancy for Americans, but for some reason, so far as I could tell, the only factor that was touched on was the high cost of medical care for those who can afford it, when the reason for lagging life expectancy lies in those who cannot afford or obtain adequate medical care.
In addition, there’s been no significant increase in the number of MDs graduating from U.S. medical schools over the past five years, despite an estimated population increase of nearly five percent.
So why don’t Senators and Representatives know these numbers… or is it that they don’t care?
I applaud your courage in attempting to listen to any senate finance committee hearing, let alone one involving RFK. The innumeracy that you mention is more a product of the “doublespeak” that both parties are mired in where they cherry pick their own statistics and ignore the others. It’s not a question of not knowing or caring, that’s lost in the attempts to either make positive soundbites and avoid negative ones. That’s what sucks up their attention.
I suspect that digging down into structural issues is a rabbit hole far too deep to ever believe one could do anything about it. My sense is the nibbling at the edge of issues that are evident in these hearings are those that might, might someday be addressed by some sort of legislation.
My dear wife was patient enough to listen to the entire hearings and I heard RFK railing that Americans are the most unhealthy people on planet earth (or at least hedging that way). I asked her if he got any more specific than that. Nope. I asked her if he ever once mentioned obesity. Not that she could recall. If he’s only willing to address fringe issues (yes, a double meaning there), then why bother as the health secretary.
Oh, no mention of gun deaths either I guess.
There is a Star Trek episode in which the computer is forced to lie and it results in the computer losing to Spock in 3D chess consistently. RFK Jr. is sticking to the script that means health insurers have to cover less. But he can’t say that universal health insurance/care would help. Between those two items he is going to have to say bizarre things. Aside from doing this his goal is confusion and distraction.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
– Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love (1973)
What that says about politicians is one thing; what it says about those who vote for them anyway…well…
Perhaps you can hark back to your experience in government working for a representative/senator, to answer this question:
So why don’t Senators and Representatives know these numbers… or is it that they don’t care?
Our representatives should care: but do they get their staff to obtain these relevant numbers or do the staff get the numbers but the data is not used?
Nice job of turning my question back to me.
The problem with Congressional staff is that their duties exceed their capabilities. Representatives are limited to 18 permanent full time staffers and 4 part-timers… and that’s to staff both their DC office and their district office(s) (there’s also an overall salary limitation).
Eighteen people can’t keep track of everything in government, especially when the staff also has to sort out constituent problems with federal agencies and departments. Add to that the fact that few representatives really knew the numbers before they took office and that the same is true of their constituents. Too many senators and representatives operate on “feel” and the political views predominant in their district/state, and few will use statistics or numbers at variance with the political climate, even when the “climate” is wrong.
Thank you for the reminder.
The member’s caucus does not have a corporate like base of such politically necessary data which members can rely upon and is kept up to date?
It seems odd that the political Party does not fund such necessary information for its representative members?
I left Washington, D.C., thirty-five years ago. While the Representatives I worked for kept records of their supporters and contributors, at that time, I was not aware of shared databases (most members wouldn’t want to give the names of contributors to other members). Given how hard it can be to raise money for campaigns, I doubt that has changed, but that’s only my opinion. There were and are various organizations that keep track of members’ votes on key issues, but beyond that, at that time (effectively pre-computer) most knowledge was personally held.
In the UK we have an Office of National Statistics which provides essentially raw data but it needs processing. Years ago I used this data to check Covid deaths against the media announcements and became rather sceptical to say the least.