One of the most shameless pieces of "journalism" that I've read in recent weeks has to be this piece from Investor's Business Daily entitled 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul.

The article goes on to claim the following:

"hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if [the medical overhaul plan under consideration] were adopted"

"65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan"

"360,000 out of the 800,000 currently practicing doctors (or 45%) would consider quitting if reform was passed."

"More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered 'no' when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

"Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed."

At first glance, you'd assume they pulled these claims directly from their backsides, but no, they have statistics to back it up:

"The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in..."

Ah, they polled doctors... Wait a second. "Responses are still coming in"? Investor's Business Daily is opening admitting they are reporting on an incomplete survey. How many responses have yet to come in? From where? What are the demographics of the responses received so far? Not shockingly, the raw data of the survey has not been released so any outside analysis is impossible.

Another major issue with the poll is how it achieved it's "65% oppose reform" result. The question that generated that number was phrased as follows, "Do you support or oppose proposed health care reform?" What "proposed health care reform" meant was left up in the air. As of now, nobody really knows what will be in the final bill, therefore nobody can accurately say what an answer to this question really means. Perhaps the doctor's surveyed are in favor of more strenuous reforms which would include more government involvement. It's impossible to say either way and this poorly phrased question is the heart and soul of the Investor's Business Daily's claims.

Let's look at another recent poll about health reform:

A recent NPR poll shows that "63 percent of doctors say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent". The raw numbers for this poll can be found at the The New England Journal of Medicine's website.

Here we have two polls that perfectly contradict each other. One way to differenciate between the analysis of these two polls is to look at who's doing the analysis.

In one corner we have NPR and the New England Journal of Medicine. In the other corner...

The author of the Investor's Business Daily piece is Terry Jones, who has penned other objective pieces such as Can The Liberal National Media Be Trusted To Report The Facts? and Surging Oil Primes Political Pump For New U.S. Drilling. I guess we know where's he's coming from.

The magazine/website that Mr. Jones works for, Investor's Business Daily, is like Fox News on acid. News watchdog website NewsTrust.net gives Investor's Business Daily laughable marks. On a scale of 1-5, Investor's Business Daily ranks 1 for fairness, 1 for sourcing and a 1.7 for responsibility. In other words, take whatever they say with a healthy bit of scepticism.

Naturally, those on the right (like Michelle Malkin) are hailing this article as proof health care reform will spell doom for the medical industry in the United States. I warn against doing so. Promoting this study as fact only displays one's inability to distinguish real research from propaganda aimed to achieve a predetermined result.