A new faulty argument by Glen Beck

[ngant17]

Today (Thursday, 24 Sept 09) I hear Glen Beck make the absurd claim that the reason the US has a higher adult mortality rate than other countries, it has nothing to do with the lack of a public health care system.

To support his, he claimed that the statistics are skewed due to the fact that there are more automobile accidents relative to population density here in US, so these automobile accidents reduce the overall life expectancy of US.

This is a fairly shallow argument, and he doesn't even address the fact that infant mortality rates in the US are as high many 3rd world countries. So you want me to believe that children 1 year or age and younger are jumping into cars and wrecking them and causing such high infant mortality rates?

It's clear to me that a public health system will increase life expectancy for adults and also reduce infant mortality rates for children, and scumbags like Limbaugh and Beck are poisoning America with their lies and distortions and disingenuous sophisms.

[Iris]

1. just for future reference - you can probably omit the word "faulty"

whenever you use "argument" and "Glen Beck" in the same sentence!

[Viking12]

2. I was thinking along similar lines. Is it "new" or just a continuation of old faulty arguments?

[11 Bravo]

3. Yup, it's understood.

[Orsino]

7. And the word "argument," which also implies some sort of logical foundation.

The technical term for Beck's new thing is "schtick."

[Jim__]

4. If his argument were correct, he should be able to show the computation.

How many American adults die in car accidencts per year. Subtract those deaths from the number of annual deaths. How does our death rate compare to other countries now?

[ngant17]

6. some quick numbers

European Union: 40,000 traffic-related deaths annually.
Population: 491,018,683

0.01% of population.
-----------------------
United States, in 2008, death toll on U.S. highways was 37313.
Population: 304,059,724

0.01% of population.

IOW these mortality rates for traffic accidents appear to be almost exactly the same in EU and in US. I don't see any stastically-significant differences here, at least not enough that would drastically alter life expectancy rates overall. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong?

[JuniperLea]

5. Auto accident fatalities are down...

And they don't even come close to the number of people who die due to lack of health care benefits.

Snip>

The United States is currently on track to have its lowest number of highway deaths since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began tracking fatal accidents 42 years ago, according to the Associated Press.

National highway fatalities were at their highest in 1972, with more than 54,000 deaths. Data collected this year through October showed a total of 31,110 deaths, down from 34,502 at the same point in 2007.

“I’m thrilled about these numbers,” NHTSA Administrator David Kelly told the Associated Press. “When you talk about reductions in traffic fatalities in one year you are usually talking about hundreds in a good year. The fact that deaths are down 3,000 so far this year is staggering.”

Seven states have seen highway fatalities drop even more than the national average for 2008. In Wisconsin, for example, roadway deaths have dropped 21 percent, a level not seen since World War II.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2008/December/U-S-Auto-Fatalities-Decline-Significantly-in-2008.html

[gratuitous]

8. Anti-matter language: What does that mean, anyway?

"There are more automobile accidents relative to population density here in the US." I can't even tell what that would be arguing. We have more traffic fatalities because our population is more spread out than Europe's? Or less spread out? Or is Beck hoping that the population of the US is just plain dense?

[ngant17]

9. traffic mortalty rates and population density

those are my words. IMHO Glen Beck doesn't have the intelligence to use large or complex words in his vocabulary (is that why he claims to have such high TV ratings?), but in any case he did whine about something to that effect, that more people in America are owning automobiles and therefore there are more wrecks and therefore more people are killed here in America so it essentially makes the life expectancy rates lower than in other countries.

This isn't even close to a logical argument, but then again, this is Beck at his finest.

[unpossibles]

10. I've been seeing this one pop up lately

and of course, the people making such arguments don't seem to think about the fact that (a) people in accidents also often require costly medical attention, so these folks are still part of any discussion of our healthcare system, and (b) they want to remove accidental deaths from American stats but then act like other nations have no accidental deaths at all, which makes no sense.

The "logic" used by the Right is ridden with huge gaping holes, and what's worse: they never seem to understand that there are problems in their theories and postulations, and think they are the smartest person on the block. For instance, Beck also went on recently about how someone said that we're down to 4% of the amount of trees we used to have in America, and he starts talking about how we have more trees now then we did 80 years ago, which may be true but does not really address the original point at all, which was about consumption of finite resources. Also, by using his own metric (80 years ago) he is ignoring the original point of it being since America was founded - he basically moved the goalposts to 5 feet away so he could feel special.

[ngant17]

11. also they ignore infant mortality rates

which is a statistic which is unusually high here in the US.

But also you have to look at the big picture sometimes. For example, immediately after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the statistics compiled by the new Cuban government showed a marked increase in infant mortality rates on the island, but it had nothing to do with the fact that the government was begining to implement free and universal health care for the population. What was happening was, for the first time in modern Cuban history, more accurate records were being compiled and yes it did show an unusual increase in infant mortality rates wrt the previous Batista and Machado years. However, once the momentum for health care reform (revolution in Cuba's case) began to grow, the rates began to show a remarkable improvement, eventually surpassing that of the US and today it is the lowest of all Latin American countries. Even more remarkable considering the US boycott and embargo against the island, which makes medicines more expensive for them.

[greenbriar]

12. GB is disgusting

hey...GB GWB...all puke worthy