... “the mortality gap between Republican and Democratic counties
has really widened quite considerably.”
This should not be surprising to anyone who care about people's health. One political party has tried to take away health care coverage for people. The other has stood up and provided it.
The result is that the counties in the areas dominated by the health-care party are dying off in much smaller numbers than those in the ones of the party that opposes health care.
The results are stunning, and it includes all diseases such as heart, cancer, and even suicide.
This is based on data from the CDC for the first 18 years of the 21st Century.
Researchers looked at data
The study was conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and it outlines the sad countours of health in America,
A new study highlights how closely connected politics and health outcomes have grown over time. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined mortality rates and federal and state election data for all counties in the U.S. from 2001 to 2019. The team found what they call a “mortality gap” — a widening difference between age-adjusted death rates in counties that had voted for a Democrat or a Republican in previous presidential and governor elections.
The team found that mortality rates decreased by 22 percent in Democratic counties but by only 11 percent in Republican counties. The mortality gap rose across top disease areas, including heart disease and cancer, and the mortality gap between white residents in Democratic versus Republican counties increased nearly fourfold during the study period.
Results are published in the British Medical Journal.
“In an ideal world, politics and health would be independent of each other and it wouldn’t matter whether one lives in an area that voted for one party or another,” said corresponding author Haider Warraich, MD, of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Brigham. “But that is no longer the case. From our data, we can see that the risk of premature death is higher for people living in a county that voted Republican.”
Warraich and colleagues used data from the Wide-ranging OnLine Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database and the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Election Data and Science Laboratory. They classified counties as Democratic or Republican based on the way the county had voted in the previous presidential election and adjusted for age when calculating mortality rates.
“Growing ‘Mortality Gap’ detected between Democratic and Republican
counties,” Brigham and Women’s.org, June 7. 2022
Why is this occurring?
The reasons for this are not as clear as the conclusions, but they point to everything from political commitment for better health to individual lifestyle choices,
Health experts say Democratic counties are more likely to adopt policies that benefit health outcomes.
Study authors observed a substantial drop in mortality rates in Democratic counties after the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Warraich said. More Democratic states than Republican states adopted Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which expanded health insurance coverage to people with low income.
“These data can open people’s eyes to the fact that policy matters and it’s having a real effect on people’s lives,” he said.
However, health experts say individual behavior can’t be discounted as research has shown people living in Democratic counties are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors, experts say.
“From what we’ve seen over time, many health behaviors have become divided over political lines," Warraich said. "Democratic-leaning people are more likely to accept vaccination, practice social distancing, and more likely to engage in healthier habits.”
Adrianna Rodriguez, “The 'mortality gap' between Republican and Democratic
counties is widening, study says,” USA Today, June 9, 2022
The study was conducted prior to the Covid pandemic, and the results after that may be even more dramatic.
Data
Here is a summary of what the researchers found,
Overall, the team found that mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664 (22 percent), but in Republican counties, mortality rates declined from 867 to 771 (11 percent).
When the team analyzed by race, they found that there was little gap between the improvements in mortality rates that Black and Hispanic Americans experienced in Democratic and Republican counties. But among white Americans, the gap between people living in Democratic versus Republican counties was substantial.
The mortality gap remained consistent when the researchers looked only at counties that had voted Republican or Democratic in every presidential election year studied and when they looked at gubernatorial elections. Democratic counties experienced greater reductions in mortality rates across most common causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease.
“Growing ‘Mortality Gap’ detected between Democratic and Republican
counties,” Brigham and Women’s.org, June 7. 2022
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) saved lives
While conservatives will complain about this study, the truth of it is very clear. The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare,” has saved lives,
The authors note that the widening gap in death rates may reflect the influence of politics on health policies. One of the inflection points detected in the study corresponds to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was passed in 2010. More Democratic states than Republican states adopted Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which expanded health insurance coverage to people on a low income.
The study detects an association between political environment and mortality but does not definitively determine the direction of the association or the specific factors that may explain the link between the two. The authors did not study the effect of flipping political environments — that is, counties that switched from voting Democratic or Republican to voting for the other party — on health outcomes, which could be an area of future study. The study period ended in 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have had an even more profound impact on the mortality gap.
“Our study suggests that the mortality gap is a modern phenomenon, not an inevitability,” said Warraich. “At the start of our study, we saw little difference in mortality rates in Democratic and Republican counties. We hope that our findings will open people’s eyes and show the real effect that politics and health policy can have on people’s lives.”
“Growing ‘Mortality Gap’ detected between Democratic and Republican
counties,” Brigham and Women’s.org, June 7. 2022
So, there was little evidence of a political difference at the start of the 21st Century, but it is major today.
The researchers did not have the data to study in geographical terms, but the states that rejected the ACA were predominantly in the south, which has historically high mortality rates.
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