Or, as Rand Health’s Dr. Robert Brook, MD, put it back in 2004, “I don't see how we can say we have the best health care in the world when we have nearly 44 million people uninsured," he says. "Those people are dying from lack of health care."

Nonsense.

A popular complaint by liberals is the catastrophe that a whopping 47 million people in the United States (using the most recent Census data) find themselves struggling along without health insurance. It is inconceivable to them that such a dreadfully high number of people could be walking around on the verge of imminent death while heartless economic conservatives blithely stand by and watch this tragedy unfold. Some have even pointed out that, while countries like France and Austria provide direct coverage to some 99% of their populations, only 40% of Americans are covered by state provided insurance. How could we be so cruel?

The reality is somewhat different. The 40% figure, trumpeted all-too-frequently on a number of pro-universal healthcare websites is thoroughly useless, because it has no bearing at all on the real level of coverage available to citizens of the United States. But the thing that may be surprising to so many is that the 47 million figure is equally useless.

The Census Bureau performs two surveys using two distinct methodologies in order to determine the level of insurance coverage that exists in the United States. The first is the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) which asks about health insurance coverage in the previous year. It is conducted via questionnaire each year and is the basis for the 46.6 million uninsured figure that is the basis (without rounding) of the uninsured figure most frequently referenced by those demanding that something must be done. The other survey, less widely known, is the Survey of Income and Program Participation which attempts a more comprehensive review of coverage availability.

What do these surveys mean? Well let’s consider the ASEC survey first. It determined that 84.1% of Americans were covered by health insurance in 2005. Assuming that this figure has not changed or, as is more likely, improved along with the overall economy, at least 252 million people are covered by some type of health insurance at present. It helps to put that 47 million figure in perspective.

But the story doesn’t end there. The Census Bureau concedes that the ASEC survey significantly underreports actual levels of insurance coverage and, even to the extent that the data is useful, it more likely reports the maximum number of people without insurance at a given time rather than a real picture of who has been without coverage for any material amount of time during the examination period. It is the alternative measure of insurance coverage that is the more accurate assessment and it places the level of insurance coverage in this country in the vicinity of 92%, which would place the number of uninsured people in the United States somewhere closer to 24 million. Wow. By simply comprehending the data, I have apparently saved 23 million people from the clutches of impending doom.

But the biggest misconception held by liberals is that there is little difference between the coverage of health insurance and the actual accessibility of health care. Such is obviously not the case.

Some years ago, the Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academy of Sciences) issued a paper arguing that some 18,000 deaths, or about 0.7% of deaths that year, were attributable to a lack of “preventive services, a timely diagnosis or appropriate care”. Set aside for a moment the obvious – that, if lack of insurance truly equated to lack of care, the percentage would have to be much higher, as the report concedes, lack of insurance is but one of the reasons that seeking treatment might be delayed. To what, then, do we compare this? Advocates of universal health care would like you to believe that adopting such a system would magically save the lives of each of those people. Again, such is obviously not the case.

The rationing of care that inevitably results from the implementation of a universal healthcare system can be just as lethal. Don’t believe me? Ask the nearly 200 Ontarians who either died waiting for coronary bypass surgery or were deemed to have waited too long for the procedure to be successful if socialized medicine assures everyone timely care – and those are just the deaths related to just one procedure in one province of one country.

Canada is by no means the exception, though its general prohibitions against private care make matters worse. In Great Britain, according to government statistics, more than a million people are waiting just to be admitted to hospitals at any given time. And some 10,000 people will wait more than 15 months for surgery, including some waiting for cancer surgery that can be (and, in the past, has been) delayed so often that the cancer becomes inoperable. It’s even worse in New Zealand where just a couple of years ago it was determined that 111,000 people, out of a population of 3.6 million (less than that of Los Angeles) are similarly forced to wait. Similar tales are told in other countries that have embraced socialized medicine. And these are not the poverty stricken countries that have truly embraced socialistic economic systems.

Also of note is that the evidence does not support the contention that patients seek more preventive services under a universal system than under the system in place in the US. For example, a comparison of British and American doctors performed in the 1990s indicated that patients met with doctors for routine visits no more frequently in Britain than in the US, but that American patients had longer visits and significantly greater access to diagnostic equipment and testing. Likewise, in Canada, the fee structure is so designed that even the most basic diagnostic testing requires referral to a hospital.

Advocates of socialized medicine would have you believe that adopting such a system saves lives. But the cold realities of care rationing that inevitably result show that position to be nothing more than an illusion.