Do Most Doctors Really Favor Socialized Medicine?
By Paul Hsieh, MD @ 12:01 AM   
There's been a lot of news buzz lately about this recent Reuters news story claiming that, "Doctors support universal health care". But how can this be, given that the majority of physicians I know hold the opposite opinion?
Fortunately, David Catron explains the problems with the survey methodology:The lead author of this "survey" is Aaron E. Carroll, a single-payer zealot on the Board of the activist group "Physicians for a National Health Program."
This guy routinely produces "studies" and "surveys" that somehow always show that Americans in general and the medical community in particular want government-run health care. Catron also notes that the PNHP website itself states:About 500 questionnaires were undeliverable, 197 were returned by physicians no longer in practice, and 2,193 were completed (51% response rate) and returned to Drs. Carroll and Ackermann. Catron concludes:Anyone with a basic understanding of statistical samples will see a red flag here. Surveys of this type are worthless if the sample isn't random, and this one doesn't pass that test. The 2,193 respondents obviously constitute a self-selected group and, as such, are not representative of the larger population of physicians.
Dr. Carroll knows this, of course, yet he disingenuously foists this fraud on the public. Labels: Analysis
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