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"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)."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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? "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=…
Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?
Isn't the entire point of politics and political parties to change social outcomes? "Your policy X will negatively impact social outcomes because reason Y while my policy Z will positively impact them" is a huge chunk of politics.
Besides, I don't see how actually trying to measure outcomes of specific policies is "demagoguery"? The author(s) of this paper may be wrong (I didn't look too deeply at the study), but that's not the same as "demagoguery".
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 agree that if you go only at the top decile, the median democrat voter could make a bit more than the median republican voter (idk really), but if you take the whole population? I remember 2016 Sanders campaign funding.
Also, i went to West Virginia, an know the people there, happen to meet the local democrat (pro blue water, proponent of the redneck movement, basically a communist compared to the average american) and saw his electorate. I mean, they do live the good life, they eat venison and a lot of homegrown vegetables, they ride horses and sell lilies (no joke), brew their (mostly) bad beer and throw day-long parties on sunday where you jam from one PM to eleven (i improved more in two weeks there than in the last five year). But their income? i'd be surprised if they aren't in the last decile (or almost there).
Obesity. 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.
If it's cost, healthy home cooked food is as cheap or even cheaper than unhealthy fast food. But so many people I talk to think it's cheaper to get fast food. If you have a shred of common sense you can make really tasty and cheap healthy food at home.
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: "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…
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.
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…
[0] I don't currently have time to verify this myself.
> Black Americans experienced largely similar improvement in AAMR in both Democratic and Republican counties. 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? > Rural Republican counties experienced the highest AAMR and the least improvement What if living in a rural area is more of a factor than being a "Repulican county"? Thi…
What are you quoting? I can't find the phrase "AAMR" in the article at all. Nor "Black Americans."
Obesity. 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.
I live in the Midwest. If you drive past the suburbs, the only restaurants available are fast food burger, fried chicken and pizza chains, with a subway thrown in (I don't consider subway healthy). Obviously it's not profitable to own a healthy restaurant out there, but why? Is it a lack of healthy eating education? Is it a "harder" life and junk food is a reward? Or is it cost? If it's cost, healthy home cooked food…
I suspect it's also something like 5x cheaper to compose healthy meals 5x healthier at home, IF one has a home in which such can be done.