A key takeaway from the study is that Americans are getting healthier. Figure 5 shows a big drop in heart disease which must be due to more exercise and better eating habits. Also:<p>"In this national analysis, we found that Americans living in counties that voted Democratic during presidential elections from 2000 to 2016 experienced lower age adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) than residents of counties that voted for a Republican candidate, and these patterns were *consistent across subgroups (sex, race and ethnicity, urban-rural location).*"<p>I.e. many of the tried and true methods of "explaining away" a study's result does not apply.
Obesity.<p>I grew up in a "deep red" area of the Midwest. It wasn't always like this, but it seems obesity is the norm now. And obesity has many health consequences. It's probably more cultural than political, though.
Doesn't this just reflect the class of the average voter of the two parties, ie. measuring the different socio-economic realities? Seems a bit over the top to hitch it all on ‘political environment’. I'm no expert but it feels like these MDs should have gotten a social scientist or two to co-author.
Maybe true but is it causal?<p>Said another way, maybe counties with poor medical facilities, poorer people, etc. are more attracted to voting Republican. The title might read "The downtrodden are more attracted to Republican ideas"<p>Not saying this is true either it's just that the causal factors may not be part of the study. They tried to include race/color and gender but the effect is still visible across the board.<p>They did not study obesity or income level, which I suspect would show even stronger correlation to an increase in AAMR than what the county voted in the last election.
The conclusion reached by the authors in the original paper does not say “US death rates show how politics affect public health.” Here is the rather simple conclusion they reached:<p>> Conclusion: The mortality gap in Republican voting counties compared with Democratic voting counties has grown over time, especially for white populations, and that gap began to widen after 2008.<p>That’s it.
And also: Poor folks don't survive long enough to become seniors who vote.
<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/poor-people-often-dont-survive-to-become-seniors-who-vote.html" rel="nofollow">https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/poor-people-often-do...</a>
I'm not even sure why you would attempt a study like this. It purely observational driven. There is no way to gauge whether the opposite parties policies would have resulted in more/less deaths. For all we know the decision made at the time (even with deaths) was the best possible outcome.
"In this study, in which we linked U.S. mortality and election data from 2001 to 2019, people in counties that voted for Republican presidential candidates were more like to die prematurely than those in counties that voted for Democratic candidates, and the gap has grown sixfold over the last two decades. We found similar results when we looked only at counties that voted for one party’s candidate throughout that period, as well as when we used state election data for governors."<p>And a link to the paper ("Political environment and mortality rates in the United States, 2001-19: population based cross sectional analysis") that the article describes: <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308" rel="nofollow">https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308</a>
> Black Americans experienced largely similar improvement in AAMR in both Democratic and Republican counties.<p>Doesn't this prove that it is something other than who your county voted for in the last presidential election causing an increase in AAMR?<p>> Rural Republican counties experienced the highest AAMR and the least improvement<p>What if living in a rural area is more of a factor than being a "Repulican county"?<p>This study seems like it is bending over backward to try to tie the risk of death to who you voted for in the presidential election.
Anyone have a good reference for how age-adjusted mortality rates are calculated? I guess the most striking thing is the ~50% difference in AAMR between Black and Hispanic populations (Figure 3 of the BMJ paper). Although I'm not really sure what the AAMR is. I wonder what the data looks like if it were presented as a life expectancy number (or maybe mean age of death and its standard deviation). Wouldn't that convey essentially the same thing?
Why are the democratic counties nearly halfed over the study, while the republican counties increase slightly? While the number of people increase? Are democrat counties growing together?<p>"The study period covered five presidential elections from 2000 (673 Democratic counties, 132 833 397 population; 2439 Republican counties, n=147 957 141) to 2019 (490 Democratic counties, n=176 971 611; 2622 Republican counties, n=145 413 920) (supplementary tables 1 and 2)."
TL;DR Owners of Aston Martins live 10 years longer. Implication: if you buy one, you too will live longer.<p>This example of pseudo logic is very popular in politics because most voters struggle with logic, but love to look smart, so pseudo logic aopeals to them.
Here's a crazy experiment to try. Try to find some decent statistics on how many lives are saved by modern healthcare in countries you think have good healthcare systems. Basically try to prove that modern healthcare, when viewed in total, is a net benefit. Keep in mind that medical error is one of the leading causes of death. And things like: you were sick and took an antibiotic. Maybe you recovered faster, but you probably would have survived even without the antibiotic.<p>I believe it is a benefit as a matter of faith, but I couldn't prove it to a skeptical person.