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October 15, 2009

PolitiFact: Glenn Beck's healthcare claim = False

PolitiFact debunked Glenn Beck's claim that 45 percent of physicians would quit if health reform passes.

We found several problems with the poll and the way Beck described its results:

-- Beck misstated what the poll asked. Beck said that 45 percent of doctors will quit. But in fact, the poll found that 45 percent of doctors said they will consider quitting. Considering quitting isn't the same thing as quitting, which makes Beck's statement a significant exaggeration.

In addition, the specific question asked of respondents was, "If Congress passes their health care plan, will you ... continue your practice, [or] consider leaving your practice or taking an early retirement?" This wording leaves open the possibility that respondents are saying they might simply leave their current practice to join another practice, rather than quit.

-- The poll had a low response rate. According to the statistics published in IBD, 1,376 practicing physicians responded to the poll, out of the 25,600 solicited nationally. That's a 5.4 percent response rate. In one of its articles about the poll, IBD bills this as "a high rate of return, considering how difficult doctors are to get hold of." But another survey of doctors released around the same time managed to do better -- much better.

That other survey was conducted by Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman, internists and researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, who published the results in the New England Journal of Medicine. They mailed 5,157 questionnaires and got a response rate that exceeded 43 percent -- nearly eight times the IBD survey's rate. In fact, Keyhani and Federman reached almost 50 percent more doctors despite sending out only one-fifth the number of inquiries.

Readers of PK will be familiar with the first listed flaw in Beck's statasticulation. Misrepresenting what polls find, by mistating what they ask, seems to be a favorite tactic of anti-healthcare activists, as one of our current trolls is fond of demonstrating in comments.

Posted by Kevin at October 15, 2009 05:36 PM