{"id":786,"date":"2017-01-19T14:02:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T23:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/?p=786"},"modified":"2017-01-19T14:21:56","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T23:21:56","slug":"the-real-death-panels-and-their-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/the-real-death-panels-and-their-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Death Panels and Their Toll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Robert Reich <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RBReich\/posts\/1441035862575672\" target=\"_blank\">noted<\/a>, &#8220;the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concludes that Republican plans to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act will immediately cause 18 million Americans to lose their health insurance. A decade from now, 32 million fewer Americans will be insured.\u201c Reich went on to say that the report does not provide any specific numbers on the actual death toll created by that loss of coverage.But, there has been research over the past few decades on just that. Wilper et al. revisited research from 1993 and found that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Among all participants, 3.1% (95% confidence interval [CI]=2.5%, 3.7%) died. The hazard ratio for mortality among the uninsured compared with the insured, with adjustment for age and gender only, was 1.80 (95% CI=1.44, 2.26). After additional adjustment for race\/ethnicity, income, education, self- and physician-rated health status, body mass index, leisure exercise, smoking, and regular alcohol use, the uninsured were more likely to die (hazard ratio=1.40; 95% CI=1.06, 1.84) than those with insurance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That means that between the CBO conclusions and research conducted on the impact of being uninsured on mortality (which indicates that 1.4 <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-787\" src=\"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-content\/uploads\/skull-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-content\/uploads\/skull-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-content\/uploads\/skull.jpg 533w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>times more people will die than the typical 3% in a population controlled for other matters), killing the Affordable Care Act is also going to kill at least 300,000 people, and that toll will likely rise to 600,000.<\/p>\n<p>Where are those deaths going to fall? I am guessing they will fall most heavily on the poor, uneducated, and ill-prepared supporters of the GOP and Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Want to talk about death panels? It is now very clear that the only death panels we have in the United States is the GOP majority in the US House of Representatives and US Senate. Fasten your seat belts; we are in for a very bumpy ride&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Notes<\/p>\n<p>United States Congressional Budget Office. \u201cHow Repealing Portions of the Affordable Care Act Would Affect Health Insurance Coverage and Premiums.\u201d <i>Congressional Budget Office<\/i>. Last modified January 17, 2017. Accessed January 19, 2017. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/publication\/52371.\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/publication\/52371.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wilper, Andrew P., Steffie Woolhandler, Karen E. Lasser, Danny McCormick, David H. Bor, and David U. Himmelstein. \u201cHealth Insurance and Mortality in US Adults.\u201d <i>American Journal of Public Health<\/i> 99, no. 12 (December 2009): 2289\u20132295. Accessed January 18, 2017. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2775760\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2775760\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Robert Reich noted, &#8220;the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concludes that Republican plans to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act will immediately cause 18 million Americans to lose their health insurance. A decade from now, 32 million fewer Americans will be insured.\u201c Reich went on to say that the report does not provide any specific [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":714,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marc-grober","category-social-welfare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}