The Deconstruction of Another Rightwing Lie

One of the current talking points against the ongoing healthcare reform is the refrain that "US life expectancy is the best in the world if you exclude gun deaths and traffic deaths".

Noted participants of this lie include former New York Republican lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey (who has to be one of the slimiest politician alive: the year she published her lie-filled article on the New Republic attacking Clinton's healthcare reform while ostensibly posing as an "impartial outsider", she was secretly on Big Tobacco payroll), and our guardian of family value, noted adulterer Senator John Ensign, on the senate floor:

... are you aware that if you take out gun accidents and auto accidents, that the United States actually is better than those other countries?

Except this is not true.

The average life expectancy of the US lags OECD countries by about 1.7 years. Auto deaths in US over and above OECD rates (people die in auto accidents in Europe too) costs the average American about 80 days in life expectancy. Gun-related deaths, net of suicides (people commit suicides outside of the US via non-gun methods) is about 150 days.

Controlling for the two effects would close the life expectancy gap from about 1.7 year to about 1 year. Not only does this not put US on top, there is still a significant gap in life expectancy.

So where is this line coming from? The original study came from the rightwing thinktank AEI , one that was quickly challenged by OECD for being methodologically sloppy. But even if we assume for a second that the study is sound, both Ensign and McCaughey lied by saying what the study did not say.

What the study says:

Controlling for auto deaths, gun deaths and income, US life expectancy is the best in the world.

What Ensign and McCaughey say:

Controlling for auto deaths, gun deaths, US life expectancy is the best in the world.

See the omission? That's going from "the night Kobe and I combined to score 80 points for the Lakers" to "the night I scored 80 point for the Lakers".

That's dishonest. Whether this was due to the politicians knowingly lie about the results or the AEI authors deliberately obscuring the results is another matter.

And that supposed income effect? That turned out to be pretty silly. Their panel regression estimates the impact of income on life expectancy, and because the US has a) high income relative to Europe and b) has a bad life expectancy, it generated completely nonsensical results.

For example, in their regression (p.21 of the pdf), Canada, whose actual life expectancy is 77.3, is "adjusted" down to be 76.2 because Canadians "in theory" don't make enough money to be as healthy as they are in reality. In contrast. United States, whose actual life expectancy is 75.3, is "adjusted" to be 76.9 because we have such a high income that "in theory" we should be very healthy.

Normal human beings would look at this result and say: "this means that we are not as healthy as we should be. Something is wrong."

AEI and their rightwing kin, on the other hand, say: "Sure we're not healthy, but look how healthy we should be in theory! We're number 1!".

That is dishonest and stupid.