Just out of curiosity, on the claim that hospitals and doctors kill more than they save, what is the standardized population set used to represent the people that "they save"?

How many people do hospitals and doctors "save"? Do they kill more people, for example, than visit doctors and hospitals and do not die during the visit? That would seem to be unlikely. It seems that more people were at my local hospital the last time I went than died that day in my city.

Many statisticians and epidemiologists, as well as economists, would have some difficulty coming up with a number of how many have been "saved" by doctors and hospitals. Is it many? Is it restricted to those who were dying upon entry but then did not die? Those who have died and been revived? Victims of serious accidents who did not die?

This is a number I look forward to discovering. How many people do "hospitals and doctors...save"?

Well, we could look for areas of the planet in which there are no hospitals and doctors, but there are guns, and see how healthy everyone in that area is. But then we'd have to define how big an "area" is, for example, in my house there are no hospitals or doctors but there may be guns, so that wouldn't prove anything.

Probably you'd want a sample population of not just statistical significance, but large enough where it seemed to represent some entire population or subset of a population.

Or we could try the laboratory version in which we destroy a nation's medical infrastructure but allow weapons depots to be plundered and dismiss the nation's armed forces until an insurgency arises. Iraq, for example.

If we were to evaluate two different nations' spending on healthcare as a raw fact, we may miss a few details.

Say, in one nation, that the healthcare budget included few statues.

But in another nation, 90% of the nation's healthcare budget is actually invested in a giant statue of a doctor.

If the nation with the giant doctor statue were to spend annually 50% more than the non-giant-doctor-statue nation, yet had measurably worth health statistics, it would probably be a bad idea to conclude that the sheer number of dollars expended alone would be the main factor.

Reducing the health budget of the giant doctor statue building nation until it matches the other nation's budget may not improve the situation, because it is possible that then all of the health spending went to the giant doctor, while zero went to medication, disease and sickness prevention, and treatment.

Should be "measurably worse" not "measurably worth", unleth I jutht stharted talking that way.

According to McClatchy -- which, shockingly enough, appears to be aiming to be an actual news service, you know, with, like, reporting and stuff, not just administration and fluffer group stenography -- in 1998 the Federal Highway Administration plan to shore up the nation's infrastructure. Apparently that plan has been continued and results in regular reports.

1. Preserve and enhance the infrastructure of Federal-aid highways with emphasis on the NHS.

* Increase the percentage of kilometers (miles) on the NHS that meet Owner-Agency managed pavement performance for acceptable ride quality to over 93 percent within 10 years. (International Roughness Index less than or equal to 2.68m/km (170 inches/mile)).

* Improve the condition of NHS bridges so that less than 20 percent are classified as deficient in 10 years,

* Improve the condition of all bridges so that less than 25 percent are classified as deficient in 10 years.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/fhplan.html

Now, I realize that all sorts of government agencies come out regularly with plans, guidelines, goals, missions, etc., most of which are declared to the four winds to give their planning bureaus something to do.

According to the FHWA's own conclusions, by 2006 (the studies were published 2002, 2004, 2006) they had come close to their goals, if I understand them, concluding that by the 2006 report, only 26.7% of bridges were "deficient".

Most bridges are inspected every 2 years and receive ratings based on the condition of various bridge components. Two terms used to summarize bridge deficiencies are "structurally deficient" and "functionally obsolete." Structural deficiencies are characterized by deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements and reduced load-carrying capacity. Functional obsolescence is a function of the geometrics of the bridge not meeting current design standards. Neither type of deficiency indicates that a bridge is unsafe. Rural bridges tend to have a higher percentage of structural deficiencies, while urban bridges have a higher incidence of functional obsolescence due to rising traffic volumes. The percentage of bridges classified as deficient fell from 27.5 percent in 2002 to 26.7 percent in 2004. Most of this decline was the result of reductions in the percent of structurally deficient bridges.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2006cpr/es03h.htm

Is it possible that the FHWA was actually allowed by the Bush Jr. administration to actually continue its work fairly unencumbered with the kind of crony idiocy other agencies suffered, at least to the degree that it was following along the pre-Bush Jr. administration 1998 plan?

Or would someone more familiar with the National Bridge Inventory division have to investigate and tell us what was up?

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/

Don't you understand that the way you demonstrate your news media courage and objectivity and independence is by becoming the closest buddies, associates, and all-around pals with the President and his friends as you can?!

Yeah, like anyone wants to listen to some boooooooring reporter nerd who, like, goes around talking to some nobody Iraqis or some wimp a** professors or much worse some sort of weird dope-smoking communist "anti-war" Democrats.