There are lies, damn lies and statistics…….and there’s lying about statistics.

I copy underneath a letter I wrote to the Times a few days ago which they seem to have decided against publishing.

Dear Sirs,

Anatole Kaletsky reports in his article of June 18th that 47 million US citizens do not have health insurance. This figure was also reported in your leader of June 11th. This is not true.

The figure of 47 million finds its origin in the Current Population Survey released by the US Census Bureau in 2007. A quick check of this data reveals that of the 47 million uninsured, 10 million are not in fact US citizens.

Furthermore, Kaletsky indicates that these uninsured Americans could ‘die because they cannot afford medical care.’ However, of the 47 million uninsured people in America 17.7m live in households with annual incomes over 50 thousand dollars, with 9.3m of these having annual incomes over 75 thousand dollars. Clearly not everyone who can afford to insure will do so and a significant minority chooses to foot their health care bills as they arise.

Faithfully yours,

Jonathan Newton
Deputy Chairman, The Bow Group