Originally posted by fredjr82:
Barack Obama says health care law has led to 50,000 fewer preventable hospital deaths
PolitiFact ruling:
Obama said the Affordable Care Act is "a major reason why we've seen 50,000 fewer preventable patient deaths in hospitals."
Independent experts said the report Obama was using as evidence represents a credible attempt to quantify recent improvements in preventing hospital-patient deaths, even if the numbers are estimates rather than hard figures. They added that it's reasonable to credit the health care law's Partnership for Patients program with accelerating the gains, even if the improvements were already under way at the time the law was passed.
The statement is accurate but needs clarification, so we rate it Mostly True.
Priceless. You post this in response to the financial clusterf--k that is caused by the ACA in the OP's article? The program you referenced as a part of the ACA could have been done without submarining the entire insurance system. In fact, if you notice the dates of the study, this program is one of the very few from the law that were implemented right away vs. waiting until after the 2012 election.
Also, I noticed that you did some creative editing in your cut and paste above. Here is some relevant information that you left out for some reason.
•
These numbers are estimates. Obviously, it's not possible to literally count the number of deaths prevented in the same way you can count actual deaths. So the authors of the report had to use a complicated set of estimating techniques to come up with the 50,000 figure.
The authors of the report made a point of including some caveats, including that "the estimate of deaths averted is less precise than the estimate of the size of the reduction" in hospital-acquired conditions." The report also notes "uncertainty inherent in our statistical extrapolations" and says that it's "clear" that "tens of thousands of deaths" have been averted, which is less specific than the 50,000 figure Obama focused on.
•
Preventable deaths had already begun falling even before the health care law was enacted. Periodically, the Centers for Disease Control and Protection has analyzed data on inpatient hospital deaths, with its
most recent analysis covering data through 2010. That analysis found that the number of inpatient hospital deaths (not just preventable ones) decreased from 776,000 in 2000 to 715,000 in 2010 -- a drop of 61,000 over a decade.
In other words, hospital deaths in general were already on a downward slope prior to the health care law's passage; it's just accelerated since then. The authors of the report that Obama cited also hedged a bit on the causes for the decline, writing that "the precise causes of the decline in patient harm are not fully understood."
