The attempts of defenders of Obamacare to rouse the American people in favor of the doomed monstrosity have become more desperate and bizarre. The most recent example is taking place in Florida, where the sudden death of a young uninsured woman is being cited as an indictment of the Republican-controlled state legislature for refusing to approve the Medicaid expansion so generously being offered by the feds. If the woman in question had access to federally-mandated Medicaid, they argue, she would of course have gone in for preventative screening which would have revealed her cardiac abnormality and somehow saved her life. Once again, heartless Republicans are causing the death of innocents.
But wait, there’s more. A study is out which demonstrates that Republican legislatures across the country will kill more than 17,000 Americans annually with policies similar to Florida’s. It’s on the healthaffairs.org blog, where the article “Opting out of Medicaid Expansion: The Health and Financial Impacts,” explains it all. Real Harvard doctors, led by the estimable David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, crunch the numbers—and they could not possibly have an agenda as they look out for our welfare. Could they?
If the names sound familiar, there is a reason. The authors have made names for themselves over the last three decades as passionate proponents of a socialized, single payer health care system. It is nice of them to come to the aid of Obamacare given that it does not go nearly far enough in that direction for their tastes, but they are no doubt seeing the ACA as merely a steppingstone to a British NHS-system, which they would love to impose on the American body politic. In fact, a look back at their tactics demonstrates the power of cynicism coupled to appeals to authority, which has driven much of their so- called research. Their methods are fairly clear-cut: manipulate large databases in order to reach their preconceived conclusions, dress what comes out of the sausage machine up with dubious statistical tools, and, presto, they have demonstrated the superiority of socialized medicine.
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