Monday, 23 January 2017
Harvard doctors just revealed how many people will die from repealing Obamacare
Harvard doctors just revealed how many people will die from repealing Obamacare
Zach Cartwright
Two physicians with decades of experience studying death rates relating to changes in health coverage have concluded that repealing Obamacare is fatal.
Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, both professors of public health at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School, both agree that even under the most conservative estimates, getting rid of President Obama’s signature healthcare reform law will result in 43,956 deaths every year.
Himmelstein and Woolhandler based their numbers on the New England Journal of Medicine’s (NEJM) findings that for every 455 people across multiple states who received health insurance through Medicaid expansion, at least one life was saved due to finally being able to see a doctor. The NEJM’s sample focused on Arizona, Maine, and New York –states that dramatically increased adult eligibility for Medicaid — and consisted of adults between the ages of 20 and 64, observed five years prior to and after expansion of Medicaid programs, from 1997 through 2007.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Himmelstein and Woolhandler expressed pessimism for President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Health and Human Services nominee Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia) for coming up with a replacement for Obamacare after repealing it. Indeed, both argued that the reforms proposed by the Trump administration to take the place of Obamacare could actually cause even more deaths than they initially predicted:
Abolishing minimum coverage standards for insurance policies would leave insurers and employers free to cut coverage for preventive and reproduction-related care. Allowing interstate insurance sales probably would cause a race to the bottom, with skimpy plans that emanate from lightly regulated states becoming the norm. Block granting Medicaid would leave poor patients at the mercy of state officials, many of whom have shown little concern for the health of the poor. A Medicare voucher program (with the value of the voucher tied to overall inflation rather than more rapid medical inflation) would worsen the coverage of millions of seniors, a problem that would be exacerbated by the proposed ban on full coverage under Medicare supplement policies.
Earlier this month, the Republican-led Senate passed a resolution calling for the repeal of six planks of Obamacare, including coverage for pre-existing conditions and young people remaining on their parents’ health insurance plan until they’re 26 years old. The Senate instructed the House to have a repeal bill ready by this Friday, January 27.
Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at zachcartwright88@gmail.com.
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