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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

#31

Post by Barrin92 »

akomtu wrote: post #26

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.

that's not the TL;DR of the piece at all. One important point the article talks about is the expansion of Medicaid to at risk individuals predominantly in blue states, and it seems intuitive that this is politically causative rather than just class correlation.

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

#32

Post by belltaco »

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.

Not really:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016...

>In fact, Silver parsed the data to discover the average Trump voter makes $72,000 per year — a middle-class income solidly above the typical American.

>As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.

>That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

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

#33

Post by wffurr »

yesfitz wrote: post #24
tomrod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

SDoH: https://i.imgur.com/SJUL4P6.png

ADI was a little harder, landed on https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.120.020466 after a few searches.

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

#34

Post by kibwen »

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.

The study takes ruralness into account, shown in this graph: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/377/bmj-2021-069308/F4.mediu...

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

#35

Post by tokai »

nr2x wrote: post #17
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.

It’s access to care after 2008, democratic areas expanded it, republicans didn’t.

Sorry I forgot to specify that I commented on the paper mentioned in the start of the second paragraph. That study only looks at voting patterns and mortality.

I'm sympathetic to Warraich's position, but its weak that he combines the conclusions of the voter patterns and access-to-care study in an opinion article and not in a peer reviewed paper. Hopefully one is in preparation.

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

#36

Post by bobkazamakis »

akomtu wrote: post #26

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.

> pseudo logic facts don't care about your feelings; red states average higher obesity rates.

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

#38

Post by classichasclass »

yesfitz wrote: post #24
tomrod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

SDoH: Social determinants of health

Not sure if this is what OP meant, but I read ADI as acceptable daily intake. Area deprivation index might also fit.

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

#39

Post by gumby »

nr2x wrote: post #16

Seems like a problem that will solve itself eventually, admittedly with much collateral damage.

As a recent kerfuffle about one of Louisiana's senators (Cassidy) shows: if you slice the data by race you'll see that the death rates for whites is closer to the rates of the States with good outcomes; the outcomes for black residents is much worse.

In his case he was willing to point this discrepancy out, though he immediately blamed the victims.

So if it sounds like it will sort itself out, it may end up doing so on the backs of the least enfranchised.

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

#40

Post by mistrial9 »

Valgrim wrote: post #6
mistrial9 wrote: post #4

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

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.

good on you to look more carefully.. I would say that the emotion here is the health outcome.. by saying "super bad health outcome" == "that group over there" it appeals to emotions, because just about any whole person would care about health outcomes for others, and any literate person would very likely care about health outcome for themselves.

with the emotion being the health outcome response, I would tend towards Yes, demagogue.

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