If Obamacare Was So Great, Why Did Life Expectancy Drop Last Year?

The Left has been howling that Obamacare’s supposed repeal is going to cause people to die from losing health insurance. This is an ironic because life expectancy dropped last year.

Here is an example of such a talking point:

Simple true analysis: Under Trump/RyanCare many people will literally die from lack of access to healthcare. That is indisputable #JustSayIt

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) March 13, 2017

Russert must have been literally shaking as he literally wrote that tweet. And here is that tweet literally debunked:

Life expectancy dropped last year for the first time in decades with Obamacare. Your analysis is “simple,” but it’s not “true.” https://t.co/H6UFKDOs8k

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) March 13, 2017

Indeed, The Washington Post reported in December that life expectancy fell “from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015,” the first time there had been a decrease in life expectancy since 1993. Additionally, the death rate increased by 1.2 percent, the first time the death rate had risen since 1999.

The Post quoted the University of Michigan’s David Weir saying that “virtually every cause of death” increased last year.

“There’s this just across-the-board [phenomenon] of not doing very well in the United States,” Weir said.

Because it’s the Post, they concluded their article by citing a Dartmouth professor that attributed the decline in life expectancy to “income inequality, nutrition differences and lingering unemployment” – but Obamacare was not mentioned at all in the article.

If the Post actually did thorough research for their article, they would have realized that most of the newly-insured under Obamacare have received their insurance through Medicaid; studies have shown that Medicaid either has “no effect or a negative effect on mortality.” In fact, some studies show that Medicaid can result in worse health outcomes than for those who don’t have insurance at all.

The Washington Post reported in December that life expectancy fell “from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015.”

However, such facts would get in the way of the Left’s precious feelings-based narrative.

Read Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro’s piece here for more on why it’s a lie that Trumpcare would kill millions.

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