Our Health Policy Matters

It is never easy to absorb unpleasant information. And when I was a policymaker, if someone told me that my decisions were going to cost innocent people their lives, then I usually chalked it up either to hyper-sensationalism or hyperbole.  After all, would passing a small increase in a business tax really force an employer to imperil workers by cutting corners on safety?  Would gun registration really leave a homeowner defenseless in the case of a break-in? Would cutting back welfare a few dollars actually result in a choice between eating or heating in the winter? In most instances, it was hard to see the direct connection. But the more I learned about health issues, the more I understood that there really were some decisions that were a matter of life and death.  These were the issues that taught me humility.  These were the issues that taught me that I needed to set aside my political ideology and embrace both theology and hard data whenever...

It is never easy to absorb unpleasant information. And when I was a policymaker, if someone told me that my decisions were going to cost innocent people their lives, then I usually chalked it up either to hyper-sensationalism or hyperbole.  After all, would passing a small increase in a business tax really force an employer to imperil workers by cutting corners on safety?  Would gun registration really leave a homeowner defenseless in the case of a break-in? Would cutting back welfare a few dollars actually result in a choice between eating or heating in the winter? In most instances, it was hard to see the direct connection. But the more I learned about health issues, the more I understood that there really were some decisions that were a matter of life and death.  These were the issues that taught me humility.  These were the issues that taught me that I needed to set aside my political ideology and embrace both theology and hard data whenever...

For many, the fight over whether or not to expand Medicaid is just about the money.  But they overlook the fact that the lives of more than 36,000 people may hang in the balance.  That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a study published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The study was entitled Mortality and Access to Care Among Adults After State Medicaid Expansions .  In it, the authors calculated the numbers of lives saved as a result of an earlier Medicaid expansion in three states. The three states were Arizona, New York, and Maine.  And while none of these expansion populations matched exactly the expansion population in the Affordable Care Act, they were similar enough to suggest that we might see the same results in the ACA Medicaid expansion population. The authors concluded that Medicaid expansions could save 19.6 lives for every 100,000 people between the ages of 20 and 64.  There are over 185 million Am...

For many, the fight over whether or not to expand Medicaid is just about the money.  But they overlook the fact that the lives of more than 36,000 people may hang in the balance.  That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a study published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The study was entitled Mortality and Access to Care Among Adults After State Medicaid Expansions .  In it, the authors calculated the numbers of lives saved as a result of an earlier Medicaid expansion in three states. The three states were Arizona, New York, and Maine.  And while none of these expansion populations matched exactly the expansion population in the Affordable Care Act, they were similar enough to suggest that we might see the same results in the ACA Medicaid expansion population. The authors concluded that Medicaid expansions could save 19.6 lives for every 100,000 people between the ages of 20 and 64.  There are over 185 million Am...