The national suicide rate has increased 33% since 1999. It went up nearly 4% in 2017 alone. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis has increased 8% per year from 2006-2016. Opioid abuse is linked to a pharmaceticul industry run amok.

These all read to me like economic problems and quality of life issues, not more health care insurance.

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/15/2020 12:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tangplay on 6/15/2020 12:15:00 PM (view original):
Dahs - can you explain your theory for why the ACA caused a reduction in life expectancy?

I don't need to. The data support my position. You need very good reasons to reject the obvious hypothesis, not to accept it.

No, it doesn't.

It is provable that the ACA caused healthcare accessibility to increase. 20 million more people have healthcare because of the ACA.

You have yet to prove that the ACA caused a drop in life expectancy. There are numerous other factors you would have to account for. What you are saying right now is nothing more than speculation.

So you don't, in fact, believe in Occam's Razor?

Or only when it's convenient to what you want to believe?

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/15/2020 12:05:00 PM (view original):
Alcoholism peaked in the 70s.
Suicides peaked in the 90s.
Prescription drug abuse is easily linked to low-income people getting insurance coupled with shorter visits to vet pain complaints.

The national suicide rate has increased 33% since 1999. It went up nearly 4% in 2017 alone. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis has increased 8% per year from 2006-2016. Opioid abuse is linked to a pharmaceticul industry run amok.

These all read to me like economic problems and quality of life issues, not more health care insurance.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-obese-countries/

If you read my more extended posts in the other thread, you'd see that I don't blame the ACA for reduced life expectancy. What I do think is clear is that it hasn't done anything to improve healthcare outcomes. I really don't care about coverage. Anybody can go to an ER. If your primary goal was to subsidize hospitals in areas with a lot of uninsured people (poor neighborhoods) you could do that directly with many billions of dollars less overhead. If your primary goal was to keep people healthier/alive, it failed.

I did point out that I think the ACA accelerated the process of decreasing PCP visit times, which I do think is a tangible harm.

A related factor is that reduced average reimbursement is pushing patients from PCPs to NPs and PAs. Latest data I've seen on this is from 2016, but it indicates that the average person with insurance is about 30% less likely to see a PCP than before the ACA was passed; however, they are more than twice as likely to see a NP or PA.

Says ACA is a failure because life expectancy is down.

Shown why life expectancy is down and it has nothing to do with ACA but rather broader societal problems ACA has no part of

Says never blamed ACA for life expectancy being down, but it hasn't improved health outcomes, despite objectively giving millions of people coverage they didn't have otherwise.

ok

Universal healthcare coverage will obviously save lives. How is that even debatable?

Posted by coreander on 6/15/2020 1:54:00 PM (view original):
Universal healthcare coverage will obviously save lives. How is that even debatable?

Because it isn't happening...

Because we have a privatized system!

Posted by Uofa2 on 6/15/2020 1:48:00 PM (view original):
Says ACA is a failure because life expectancy is down.

Shown why life expectancy is down and it has nothing to do with ACA but rather broader societal problems ACA has no part of

Says never blamed ACA for life expectancy being down, but it hasn't improved health outcomes, despite objectively giving millions of people coverage they didn't have otherwise.

ok

I'm ignoring this because it's stupid.

Societal problems have always been around. Again, we managed to increase life expectancy in the 30s. You referenced increases in a few relatively minor causes of death. Ok. I could point out that death rates from smoking-related causes, such as lung cancer and lower respiratory diseases - which kill FAR more people than the alcohol-related causes of death you referenced and suicide put together - are down. I've also referred to the opioid crisis as the primary driver of negative healthcare trends, so we're on the same boat there.

Posted by coreander on 6/15/2020 1:58:00 PM (view original):
Because we have a privatized system!

So universal healthcare coverage doesn't save lives? Only in a publicly-funded system?

I'll tell the Swiss.