that every 30 seconds, someone files for bankruptcy due to health care costs. That's 120 per hour, 2880 per day, and 1,051,000 per year.
According to this article, there were 1,060,000 bankruptcies (due to ANY cause) in 2008. So all but 9,000 bankruptcies in 2008 were due to health care costs? Something doesn't add up.
Maybe he took it from the studies that count all dependents as separate filers, so that instead of ~1 million bankruptcies per year, there's ~2 million. 'Cause you gotta count all the kids as separate filers. But either way, there's some number confusion going on.
"Every X seconds, someone X" statistics really get under my skin.
He also just bemoaned the fact that half of US students who enter college don't graduate, and suggested that we need to increase that percentage. I agree. But he wants to keep them in college. I think they shouldn't be going there in the first place, and as a country we're becoming obsessed with the idea that every 18 year old needs to spend 4 years in college.
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Did you know that only .001 percent of people actually think critically about statistics, rather than just bursting into applause when they hear them and quoting them to the next person they meet?
Glad to know you are among this small -- and shrinking -- minority, Caleb. Hey, guys, I know, let's come up with a hugely expensive government program to force people to think!
Some more statistics.
There were 123,234 bankruptcies in Canada last year (up 13% from the year before.) There are 33,212,696 people in Canada. 33,212,696 divided by 123,234 is 269.5. So, one bankruptcy for every 270 people.
There were 1,060,000 bankruptcies in the USA last year. There are 303,824,640 people in the USA. 303,824,640 divided by 1,060,000 is 286.6. So, one bankruptcy for every 287 people.
The rate of bankruptcy in the US last year was close to, but lower than, the rate of bankruptcy in Canada.
Canada has nationalized health care.
"He also just bemoaned the fact that half of US students who enter college don't graduate, and suggested that we need to increase that percentage. I agree. But he wants to keep them in college. I think they shouldn't be going there in the first place, and as a country we're becoming obsessed with the idea that every 18 year old needs to spend 4 years in college."
This is a lot like the obesity/smoking "problems." The so-called obesity epidemic is NOT a national, collective problem. It is an individual problem that just happens to effect a lot of individuals in the US. People want the government to ban trans fats and such to make people less fat, "for the good of the nation." But obesity is something that happens to an individual that the individual must choose to figure out how to stop. Same with smoking and with kids not graduating from college. We don't all need to pitch in to make sure every 18 year old gets his Bachelor's. The individual kids need to figure out what they have to do to be better at school, or what they can do to be able to pay for a full 4 years, or yes, like Caleb said, whether or not they really need to go to college at all.
And how come just about NOBODY notices that these 2 fields, education and medicine, are about the most problematic ones in this country AND ALSO the most government regulated? They propose more regulations and more spending to solve the problems, but those things are exactly what are already causing all the problems. Blech. Rant over now.
God, I hope America is still there by the time I come back.
Mom, I am eternally skeptical of any number or percentage I ever hear, ever. I can't turn it off, and it's annoying sometimes.
My problem with "Every X, someone X" stats is that they can be made to sound very dramatic.
"Every 5 seconds" means over 6 million a year. "Every 30 seconds" means about a million. "Every 5 minutes," which still sounds like a lot, is just 100,000 a year. But when you say "every 5 seconds" or "every 5 minutes," they sound equally dramatic to most people. If 365 people die in one plane crash, you could say that "every day, someone loses their life in a plane crash," and while it's correct mathematically, it's entirely unrepresentative of the actual situation.
Another interesting stat that I saw when I was looking up numbers last night (from the same study that counts all dependents as individual filers):
68% of the people who bankrupted in 2005 due to health care costs had health insurance.
I want to know how anybody would know whether health care costs caused somebody's bankruptcy. As far as I know, bankruptcy courts don't make causation findings -- they just figure out what to do with the person's debts. I suppose you could count up the number of bankruptcies in which the biggest debts are to health care providers -- but it would be a pretty big leap to assume that the health care debts CAUSED the bankruptcy. Lots of things cause bankruptcies -- bad divorces, lost jobs, failed small businesses, alcoholism -- just because health care debts end up among the unpaid bills doesn't mean they caused the person's financial collapse. It's a chicken and egg problem. The whole enterprise is completely suspect.
You should just keep right on with the Statistical Skepticism, Caleb, please. It may be less comfortable than uncritical acceptance, but it will stand you in good stead as you go through life. Plus, it's getting to be as rare a skill as the ability to write coherently.
And Luke, good point about regulation, education, and health care.
The studies I saw, Mom, were surveys of small (hundreds or thousands) groups of people declaring bankruptcy, not looking through documentation. Your point still stands, of course.
The one that gets me most is when someone says that, for instance, a reduction in incidence of a phenomenon from 55% to 40% is a 15% reduction. Well, it's not, dammit, it's a reduction of 15 PERCENTAGE POINTs. But it's truly a reduction of 27%. Big diff.
Of course, 57.3% of statistics are made up on the spot. And every 0.18 seconds someone makes up a statistic. I'll leave it to you to calculate, then, how often statistics are used.
And, I share your skepticism, Caleb. I think, "Yeah, right." whenever I hear a sadistic.
And I'm not gonna get started on Obama.
But you better plan on making a whole hell of a lot of money, cause he's gonna suck you dry.
Ah. That explains things, Caleb, thanks. However, if the results are self-reported, I'd still apply a certain amount of skepticism. Pick which answer you'd be more eager to give, should a surveyer call you up to ask you why you went bankrupt:
a) "Because of overwhelming health care costs!"
b) "Because I overspent on my credit cards!"
I'm not saying, of course, that nobody ever goes bankrupt because of health care costs. I'm just pointing out a certain reporting bias that might exist.
If I hear one more person say that 50% of all marriages fail I'm going to punch them in the face. That is the statistic that really makes me steam. What they MEAN is that in a given year if there are 100 marriages there are around 50 divorces. That does NOT mean that 50 percent of ALL marriages fail. That thrend would have to continue for something like 30 years for that to be true. And it doesn't take into account serial divorcers.
I'd be interested to see how the survey was written. A lot of time and careful planning goes into surveys (marketing surveys anyway) to make sure they don't have biases built in.
"And it doesn't take into account serial divorcers."
Elizabeth Taylor skews everything.
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