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U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

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Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#21

Post by the_third_wave »

mistrial9 wrote: post #4

Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?

Yes, it is. It compares age-adjusted mortality rates without taking other factors into account. What this study shows is that upper middle-class urban and suburban voters - who are more likely to vote D - have a lower mortality rate than lower and lower middle-class rural voters - who are more likely to vote R. While the article states that [r]egardless of whether we looked at urban or rural areas, people living in areas with Republican political preferences were more likely to die prematurely than those in areas with Democratic political preferences it fails to notice that 'areas with democratic political preferences' in rural states tend to be more urban and as such have more upper middle-class D voters which resemble their ideological compatriots in coastal urban areas more than they have in common with the small town and rural R voters elsewhere in their rural states.

This may be just a classical correlation =/= causation error or it is campaign fodder for the upcoming elections.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #11
robotblake wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of specific note I found this quote very alarming > There was no single cause of death driving this lethal wedge: The death rate due to all 10 of the most common causes of death has widened between Republican and Democratic areas.

Surely the solution is for Democrats to force themselves on Republicans, who should accept this imposition of control for their own good.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#24

Post by yesfitz »

tomrod wrote: post #20
splitrocket wrote: post #12

And also: Poor folks don't survive long enough to become seniors who vote. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/05/poor-people-often-do...

Yep. I have done quite a bit of work in the SDoH space. It's pretty widely discussed thst there is a negative correlation of SDoH measures like ADI and age. Tragic.

What are SDoH and ADI?

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#25

Post by Spivak »

timr wrote: post #19
commandlinefan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are the parties causative? Or is it the other way around? Commenters occasionally often point out the "red states" are the biggest recipients of welfare in spite of being the ones that vote most against it. To me, it seems that the most likely explanation for this is that the voters there see the negative effects of welfare and the ones who are voting for it are insulated most from the unintended consequences. It c…

Before looking for cause, you always look for plausible co-variates. Here, there are a ton: red counties tend to be rural. Rural places have huge problems with health care access, obesity, addiction, poverty, and many other issues that predict poor health outcome.

That would only explain a point in time state of affairs but not why they observed the effect widen along party lines. Their theory was that blue areas expanded medicare and red areas didn't but there could be others.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#26

Post by akomtu »

TL;DR Owners of Aston Martins live 10 years longer. Implication: if you buy one, you too will live longer.

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.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#27

Post by Retric »

mistrial9 wrote: post #4

Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?

One party is hurting their own constituents by limiting access to healthcare at the state level. Verifying this actually has negative outcomes isn’t inherently political. Imagine if the research showed zero correlation, that would have been far more interesting.

Understanding the outcomes of political choices isn’t inherently political. It’s completely reasonable for someone to say yes this saves lives but it’s still not worth the money.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#28

Post by Spivak »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #9
Valgrim wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demagoguery implies an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The argument presented in this articles stems from reason and is an analysis of real, verifiable data, so I'd say no.

The article tries to come to the conclusion that correlation equals causation. The title reads "A growing gap in premature deaths along party lines underscores the collision of politics and public health" which implies politics causes premature deaths. In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths.

Unless you're arguing that the typical Republican voter is skewing ruraler and poorer over time such a theory doesn't explain why the gap is growing.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#29

Post by tzs »

tokai wrote: post #5

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.

I don't know about this particular study, but others I have seen looked at things at county levels, where they could find counties that differed on voting but were otherwise similar, and found that health outcomes were indeed significantly influenced by party.

Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health

#30

Post by yuriks »

fullshark wrote: post #15
qgin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about the victory or loss of either party. It’s saying there are two Americas developing simultaneously and people in each have different health outcomes. Are the parties causative? Or are they just the labels that we have to describe the two groups currently? We don’t know.

The end of the piece makes it pretty explicit what the point is actually: authors believe democratic policies are better and should be pushed to republican regions. They then go on to talk out of both sides of their mouth on this front, that "health care shouldn't be enmeshed with politics" but hoping that politicians will "listen" to them.

What people mean when they say that is that someone's opinion on evidence-based policies shouldn't be intertwined with their allegiance to a particular party. The entire point of politics is determining policy, and policy has an effect on the outcomes the doctors that wrote the article want to improve.
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