You make a reasonable point here Pitt. Do you think you can go back to the other forum take the two shills with you and bring back some folks who try to make a point with some intelligence. Fake news and chump are not
On Feb 28, 2017 9:14 AM, "Pittalum" <[email protected]> wrote: > He makes some interesting points, but honestly, I don't think the year to > year, or 2 time frames referenced in this article are anywhere near long > enough to make any significant conclusions, let alone the conclusion that > the ACA does not improve the general public health. What exactly is this > guy trying to say anyway - that people finally getting access to healthcare > through the ACA were dead already anyway? > > I think you need at least a 20 year time frame to even begin to draw > conclusions like that. > > Anyway, it is obviously the insistence on repealing the ACA that induces > people to try to draw either of these extreme conclusions - that the ACA > saves lives or doesn't save lives. > > On Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 9:50:26 AM UTC-5, Bear Guy wrote: >> >> A long but interesting article for those of you interested in the repeal >> of the ACA. >> Bear >> >> >> No, Obamacare Has Not Saved American Lives (Photo: Sudok1/Dreamstime) >> Share article on Facebook share Tweet article tweet Plus one article on >> Google Plus +1 Print Article Adjust font size AA by Oren Cass February 27, >> 2017 4:00 AM @oren_cass The arguments of the law’s defenders don’t stand up >> to scrutiny. Repealing the Affordable Care Act, Democrats say, will “make >> America sick again.” Bernie Sanders warns “36,000 people will die yearly as >> a result.” But as with most ACA defenses, these claims describe an >> imaginary health-care reform that works, not the legislation passed by >> Congress in 2010. In reality, the best statistical estimate of the number >> of lives saved each year by the ACA is zero. Some studies do suggest that >> health insurance can saves lives. But these focus either on individuals >> with private coverage or on the Massachusetts health-care reform law of >> 2006, which primarily expanded private coverage within the Bay State. The >> ACA, by contrast, is primarily an expansion of Medicaid; in recent years, >> the share of Americans with private insurance has declined. In 2007, just >> prior to the Great Recession, 66.8 percent of non-elderly Americans had >> private insurance. By 2015, two years into the ACA’s expansion, that share >> had declined to 65.6 percent. Taking the larger economic picture into >> account by looking back to 2007 is crucial, because the private-insurance >> rate fluctuates with employment. Between 2007 and 2010, employment fell by >> 5.5 percent and private coverage fell by 7 percent. Between 2010 and 2015, >> employment rose by 8.8 percent and private coverage rose by 9.5 percent. >> ACA implementation has coincided with an increase in private coverage >> because it occurred during a period of job growth. But 300,000 fewer >> Americans have private coverage today than would have it if the ratio of >> coverage to employment had remained at its 2007–10 level over the last six >> years. Instead, the ACA has increased insurance coverage by expanding >> Medicaid. In 2007, 18.1 percent of non-elderly Americans had public >> insurance. By 2010, that share was 22 percent, and rather than declining as >> the economy recovered, it continued to climb all the way to 25.3 percent in >> 2015. This public-versus-private distinction is crucial, because studies of >> Medicaid do not find the same positive effects on mortality sometimes seen >> in studies of private insurance. Researchers have found that Medicaid >> patients with a variety of conditions and medical needs experience worse >> outcomes than similar uninsured patients. In a randomized trial in Oregon >> that gave some individuals Medicaid while leaving others uninsured, >> recipients gained no statistically significant improvement in physical >> health after two years. In the New England Journal of Medicine, a team at >> Harvard University compared three states that expanded Medicaid in the >> 2000s with others that made no change; only one of the three achieved a >> statistically significant reduction in mortality. In the Journal of the >> American Medical Association, Stanford University’s Raj Chetty and >> colleagues looked for determinants of life expectancy for individuals in >> the lowest income quartile and found that health-care access was not one of >> them. There is one exception to this trend: Medicaid may have significant >> positive effects on pregnant women and young children. But once again, the >> ACA is not that policy. Under the Children’s Health Insurance Program, >> created with bipartisan support in 1997, those groups were already eligible >> for Medicaid or a comparable program at the income levels to which the ACA >> expanded coverage for other adults. An identical 42.2 percent of children >> had public-insurance coverage before the ACA’s Medicaid expansion in 2013 >> and after its expansion in 2015. Had mortality continued to decline during >> ACA implementation in 2014 and 2015 at the same rate as during the 2000–13 >> period, 80,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2015 alone. Public-health >> data from the Centers for Disease Control confirm what one might expect >> from a health-care reform that expanded Medicaid coverage for adults: no >> improvement. In fact, things have gotten worse. Age-adjusted death rates in >> the U.S. have consistently declined for decades, but in 2015 — unlike in 19 >> of the previous 20 years — they increased. For the first time since 1993, >> life expectancy fell. Had mortality continued to decline during ACA >> implementation in 2014 and 2015 at the same rate as during the 2000–13 >> period, 80,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2015 alone. Of course, >> correlation between ACA implementation and increased mortality does not >> prove causation. Researchers hypothesize that increases in obesity, >> diabetes, and substance abuse may be responsible. But thanks to the roughly >> half of states that refused the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, a good control >> group exists. Surely the states that expanded Medicaid should at least >> perform better in this environment of rising mortality? Nope. Mortality in >> 2015 rose more than 50 percent faster in the 26 states (and Washington, >> D.C.) that expanded Medicaid during 2014 than in the 24 states that did >> not. Further, while two years is not enough time to evaluate a policy’s >> full effects, that is exactly the period over which the Massachusetts study >> found substantial mortality gains. (Look at the graph on page 589 — the >> entire improvement from the 2006 reform is achieved by 2008.) Two years of >> gains from a different policy implemented by a single state a decade >> earlier can hardly be proof that the ACA saves lives when the ACA’s own >> two-year track record tells the opposite story. If one wants to claim >> dramatic effects from ambiguous data, it is easier to argue that the ACA is >> killing people. A more reasonable conclusion for partisans of all stripes >> to accept is merely that the ACA is not saving lives. In statistical terms, >> neither the accumulation of past Medicaid studies nor current data can >> disprove a null hypothesis. What about the specific individuals who can >> show they have benefited from the ACA’s various provisions, typically by >> gaining access to costly treatment for a life-threatening condition? Their >> situation represents a challenge that post-ACA policy should aim to >> address. But their cases should not be taken as evidence that the ACA has >> been a broader net benefit to public health. One more Medicaid study, >> published last year in Health Affairs, provides perhaps the best lens for >> policymakers. There, researchers from the Yale School of Public Health >> found that states allocating less of their social-services funding toward >> health care had significantly better health outcomes. In other words, >> efforts to improve public health must remember opportunity cost and ask: >> What is the best use of the government’s limited resources, especially when >> it comes to improving the lives of lower-income Americans? The answer to >> that question is not the ACA. — Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the >> Manhattan Institute. He is the author of the new report, “Will Repealing >> Obamacare Kill People?” >> >> Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/ >> article/445260/obamacare-no-lives-saved >> http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445260/obamacare-no-lives-saved >> > -- > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. > * Read the latest breaking news, and more. > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "PoliticalForum" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. 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