EXTRAPOLATION VERSUS INTERPOLATION

From My Perspective - - -

One of the several goals of the new administration in Washington, DC pertains to a form of Universal Healthcare. The suggestion is that 47 million people are without Health Coverage and the Government must assume the responsibility to provide coverage for all residing within our borders. That coverage will very likely provide coverage for those who are not yet citizens, as well as for those who are illegal aliens. In the address President Obama presented before the Joint Session Congress and to the nation made reference to the following: “The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.” Is this true or is this a mischaracterization?

The issue rests upon extrapolation versus interpolation. The explanation and rationale for this can be found in The American Heritage explanation regarding Extrapolation and Interpolation. They are, “A mathematical procedure which estimates values of a function for certain desired inputs given values for known inputs. If the desired input is outside the range of the known values this is called EXTRAPOLATION, if it is inside then it is called INTERPOLATION. The method works by fitting a curve to two or more given points and then applying this function to the required input.” Gary Langer is Director of Polling at ABC News. He observes the following in his report entitled, “The Numbers”! In that article on March 05, 2009, he notes the following: “Medical Bankruptcies: A Data-Check (responses from the lead author of the Harvard study, Dr. David Himmelstein, are included) “President Obama’s kicking off his health care reform today in the worst possible way: with a mischaracterization of data. The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds, Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply unsupportable. The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent. A more recent study by another group, approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than “one every 30 seconds.”

The ABC News article continues with these observations: “A good part of the problem is definitional. The Harvard report claims to measure the extent to which medical costs are ‘the cause’ of bankruptcies. In reality its survey asked if these costs were “a reason” – potentially one of many – for such bankruptcies. Beyond those who gave medical costs as “a reason,” the Harvard researchers chose to add in any bankruptcy filers who had at least $1,000 in unreimbursed medical expenses in the previous two years. Given deductibles and co-pays, that’s a heck of a lot of people. Moreover, Harvard’s definition of “medical” expenses includes situations that aren’t necessarily medical in common parlance, e.g., a gambling problem, or the death of a family member. If your main wage-earning spouse gets hit by a bus and dies, and you have to file, that’s included as a “medical bankruptcy.” When I asked the lead author, Dr. David Himmelstein, about his definitions of medical bankruptcy back in 2005, he said, “It’s a judgment call,” and added that any death, for example, “to our mind is a medical event.” A last problem was sampling: The Harvard researchers surveyed bankruptcy filers in five federal court districts accounting for 14 percent of bankruptcies nationally; projecting this to the other 86 percent is sketchy. Said Himmelstein: “Obviously the extrapolation is rough.”

Consider these things with me - - - Truth is vital and basic for every interpersonal relationship and for all government. Ephesians 4:25 [The Message] summarizes it this way: “What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.” This is as plain and simple as it gets, and if avoided – it is to one’s own peril – personally or governmentally!