Statistics gathered over the past three decades show that the death rate is higher among those who do not have jobs than among those with regular employment. Unemployment, just like heart disease and cancer, is a significant health issue. While many health care advocates promote increased government funding for medical research and public health care, it would be folly to increase government spending if doing so were to affect the nation’s economy adversely and ultimately cause a rise in unemployment. A Healthy economy means healthy citizens.
The given letter to the editor has attempted to give a "health" dimension to an economic phenomenon by suggesting that economic unemployment is a health concern comparable to lifestyle and/or genetic diseases such as heart disorders and cancer. The letter further seems to suggest that increased expenditure on public health care may not be warranted, if it leads to an increase in unemployment. The entire argument is flawed due to the reasons discussed below.
The author mentions statistics over the past thirty years about death rate and unemployment. However, it remains unclear whether the same subjects were tracked over thirty years, or different cohorts were studied in different years. In other words, it has not been specified whether the study utilized longitudinal/panel data or cross section. Drawing a causal link between death rate and employment status, based on cross-section or time series data is usually not possible.
Further, the author's opening sentence mentions that the death rate is higher among those who do not have jobs than those with regular employment. Presumably, the author takes the statistics to imply that unemployment "causes" death in people. This is a preposterous claim, as he/she cites nothing about the medical cause of death in the people studied during the three decades (as mentioned). Those who were unemployed perhaps had a medical history not correlated in any manner to their employment status. In other words, unless a control-treatment analysis has been conducted, comparing the death rates amongst the employed and unemployed would be a statistical anamoly.
Continuing with the same claim, the author does not clarify the definition of "not having jobs". Were the unemployed people covered in the study out of jobs temporarily or was there a permanent loss of employment? Temporary, seasonal and permanent job loss could be differently correlated with the medical status of a person.
The letter mentions that spending on health care may affect the economy and "cause a rise in unemployment". Apart from being presented without any supporting theory, this claim is entirely ungrounded. More spending on health care and research may, on the contrary, increase employment. For instance, building of laboratories, hospitals and research centres would require people; more doctors, nurses and support staff would be required to manage the health care centres etc. Thus, the concern that increased public expenditure may cause unemployment seems unqualified.
The concerns expressed in the letter seem to be suffering from a lack of knowledge and strong theoretical basis complemented with robust evidence. However, the relation between unemployment and health seems interesting and warrants further study. The author of the letter could strengthen the argument, by quoting relevant scientific studies which conduct analysis using robust statistical techniques and covering a wide range of medical reasons.
Comments
In the letter to the editor
In the letter to the editor in the journal ‘Health Matters’ it is stated that for fear of raising unemployment, no budget raise should be given to the medical research department. The author states that statistics show a higher death-rate among the unemployed over the past 30 years, and that unemployment is a health issue as are cancer and heart-diseases. However, before these conclusions be properly evaluated, three questions must be answered.
First of all over the past 30 years, was there no other cause of rising death-rate among the unemployed? Perhaps the statistics could have been subjected to unrelated deathly diseases such as SARS and HIV. In addition, certain areas where unemployment rate is lower could have poor sanitary infrastructures. In case these were true, the statistic shouldn’t be considered.
Secondly, will keeping the same overall budget for medical research prevent unemployment from rising? Entire industrial sectors are related to the medical industry, a prevention from a budget growth could result in fewer available working places. It is also possible that a budget increase in the medicine area would not result budget decrease in the sectors responsible for jobs’ availability and dispersion. If either of these scenarios were to be true, the author’s argument’s validity would significantly decrease.
At last, are the coming years going to be similar to the past 30? Perhaps health-care could have been less available in the past than it will be in in the future. Many different factors might influence death-rate statistics in the coming years, such as medical reach and natural catastrophes. If this was to be true, this last argument is to be invalid.
In conclusion, as it stands now, the argument is utterly flawed due to a number of unwarranted assumptions. If the author were able to provide more evidence, perhaps answering the above questions, the article could be and re-evaluated, and so the possibility of stopping the budget increase for the medical research revised.
Sentence: In other words, unless a control-treatment analysis has been conducted, comparing the death rates amongst the employed and unemployed would be a statistical anamoly.
Error: anamoly Suggestion: ?
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2442 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.344 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.809 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.773 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.597 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.455 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.282 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.559 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.071 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5