(cache) The GOP bill isn't just 22 million Americans losing health insurance

Devil's Tower

The GOP bill isn't just 22 million Americans losing health insurance—it's 28,600 murders

By Mark Sumner

Tuesday Jun 27, 2017 · 7:23 AM PDT

2017/06/27 · 07:23

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 06: US President Donald Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) (L) and House Speaker Paul Ryan listen during a meeting with House and Senate leadership in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on June 6, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) — Now we get to kill people on your street.

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In what may be the year’s most timely study, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study on Monday showing something that should be obvious, but needs to be stated: Insurance saves lives.

The evidence strengthens confidence in the Institute of Medicine's conclusion that health insurance saves lives: The odds of dying among the insured relative to the uninsured is 0.71 to 0.97.

What does that mean? It means that for every 1 million people who lose health insurance, 1,300 will die early. Combine that with the CBO score of the latest Senate healthcare bill and the cost for Republicans meeting their “repeal and replace” talking point isn’t just measured in the huge increases in cost to individuals. It’s 28,600 dead Americans who would be alive if Obamacare stays in place. It’s murder to score political points with their base.

Where do those deaths come from? Uninsured people are less likely to engage in preventative care. They’re more likely to wait until conditions are more serious before seeking treatment. They’re less likely to get the best quality care or necessary follow-up care.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the ranks of the uninsured have been cut by 20 million. That’s 26,000 lives saved. But Trump and the Republicans are ready to throw those lives and more down the drain … because that’s the real price of getting revenge on Barack Obama.

Doctors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, the authors of the study, served as unpaid advisers to the Bernie Sanders campaign where they helped to evaluate health policy. They point out the difficultly of doing such a study, considering all the different variables for which it’s hard to control, but searched the literature for situations where populations were similar except for whether or not they held health insurance. The result they achieved reflects the outcome of previous studies: health insurance saves lives.

Woolhandler and Himmelstein point out that while the ACA is the current baseline, it’s not the best possible situation.

About 28 million Americans are currently uninsured, and millions more could lose coverage under policy reforms proposed in Congress. At the same time, a growing number of policy leaders have called for going beyond the Affordable Care Act to a single-payer national health insurance system that would cover every American.

Covering those additional 28 million Americans would work out to 36,400 lives saved. But instead of going there, Republicans are working on a plan that makes things much worse, while rewarding a incredibly tiny number with amounts that are greater than the payouts to entire states.

In fact, the tax cuts that the 400 wealthiest families will get from Trumpcare “roughly equal the federal cost of maintaining the expansion in Nevada, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Alaska combined.”

Those 400 families also get to know their payout comes with about 71 extra deaths each. What a nice bonus.

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