Posts Tagged ‘mortality’
“The first wealth is health”*…
As Angela J. Wyse and Bruce D. Meyer explain, lack of health insurance explains five to twenty percent of the mortality disparity between high- and low-income Americans…
We examine the causal effect of health insurance on mortality using the universe of low-income adults, a dataset of 37 million individuals identified by linking the 2010 Census to administrative tax data. Our methodology leverages state-level variation in the timing and adoption of Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and earlier waivers and adheres to a preregistered analysis plan, a rarely used approach in observational studies in economics. We find that expansions increased Medicaid enrollment by 12 percentage points and reduced the mortality of the low-income adult population by 2.5 percent, suggesting a 21 percent reduction in the mortality hazard of new enrollees. Mortality reductions accrued not only to older age cohorts, but also to younger adults, who accounted for nearly half of life-years saved due to their longer remaining lifespans and large share of the low-income adult population. These expansions appear to be cost-effective, with direct budgetary costs of $5.4 million per life saved and $179,000 per life-year saved falling well below valuations commonly found in the literature. Our findings suggest that lack of health insurance explains about five to twenty percent of the mortality disparity between high- and low-income Americans. We contribute to a growing body of evidence that health insurance improves health and demonstrate that Medicaid’s life-saving effects extend across a broader swath of the low-income population than previously understood…
“Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults,” from @nber.org.
Congress, of course, just moved to cut Medicaid; as the wording in the “Big, Beautiful BIll” stands, 8-10 million Americans stand to have the their covergae terminated orr severely reduced.
But even as we agree that extending coverage– fixing the “demand side” problem– could save lives, we should note that we have some serious supply side problems to address: 80% of the country, insured or not, lacks adequate access to healthcare service; and there’s a large and growing shortage of healthcare professionals and workers (a problem aggravated by the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on immigration). Technology offers some hope, but humans remain at the center of the issue.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As we contemplate care, we might send insightful birthday greetings to Susan Lindquist; he was born on this date in 1949. A molecular biologist, she was a pioneer in the study of protein folding. She showed that alternate structural shapes of protein molecules could result in substantially different effects and demonstrated instances in fields as diverse as human diseases, evolution, and synthetic biomaterials designed to interact with biological systems. Her work laid the foundation for the development of AI-driven systems like Alpha-Fold that accelerate the discovery and development of new drugs and therapies.
“All is vanity”*…
A growing number of modern artists would have us reflect on our lives and their meanings. Charlotte Jansen offers an example…
Oysters, lobsters, Louboutins—and death. At Cecily Brown’s current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum Museum of Art, “Death and the Maid” (through December 3rd), the trappings of capitalist society seem to slip into oblivion under her lively, vigorous brushwork and lucid tableaus. Skulls, mirrors, and references to paintings of the past remind us of the madness of materialism and the certainty of death, recasting the classic theme of vanitas for the contemporary age.
Historically, the aim of a vanitas painting was to point out the vain pursuits of our mortal existence. Evolving out of a distaste for decadence and wealth, fueled by Calvinist attitudes in 16th-century Europe, these paintings imparted a clear moral message. The burgeoning middle classes had suddenly been able to afford jewels, quills, luxurious fabrics, sheet music, and books. But, these paintings warned, no matter how much pleasure those material possessions may bring, all is futile in the face of death. In these still-life compositions, the transience of life was commonly represented in depictions of skulls, burning candles, flowers, and soap bubbles.
Unlike memento mori—another genre of painting designed to remind the viewer of their mortality—vanitas works can be distinguished for their inclusion of displays of luxury and collections of items alluding to pleasure. It’s perhaps no surprise that vanitas is making its way into the works of contemporary artists—especially in bodies of work produced during the pandemic that are now being seen in public for the first time…
The human condition: “Contemporary Artists Are Reviving Vanitas, Reflecting on Death and Decadence,” in @artsy.
* Ecclesiastes 2:2
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As we muse on mortality, we might send authentic birthday greetings to Hermann Hesse; he was born on this date in 1877. A book seller, poet, and painter, he is best known as a novelist– especially for Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, all of which are animated by a search for meaning and self-knowledge (that’s thematically related to the Vanitas painters to the past and today). In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
You can find many of his paintings here.
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”*…
Cause of death has changed over the years. In 1999, the suicide rate among 25- to 34-year-olds was 12.7 per 100,000 people. By 2016, that rate was almost 30 percent higher at 16.5.
These shifts over time are common and vary across sex and age groups.
With the release of the annual health report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I looked at the subcategories of mortality, as defined by the World Health Organization, focusing specifically on how the ten most common ways to die have changed over the years…
See (a full-sized and working version of) Nathan Yau’s animation of the changing causes of death, by sex and age group, in the U.S. from 1999 to 2016: “Shifting Causes of Death.”
* Isaac Asimov
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As we memento mori, we might spare a thoughts for Gertrude Mary Cox; she died on this date in 1978. A pioneering statistician best known for her important work on experimental design, she founded the department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University and later served as director of both the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of North Carolina State University. In 1949 Cox became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute and in 1956 was President of the American Statistical Association.
Memento Mori…
It’s reassuring to know that one is only one-tenth as likely to die of bee/hornet/wasp sting as of air/space accident, but mildly chilling to know that a fatal tumble down stairs is five times more likely than electrocution…
From Daily Infographic, How Will You Die?
click here (and again) for full chart, enlarged
As we remember poor Yorick, we might also recall that it was on this date in 1776 that 21-year-old Connecticut school teacher and Continental Army Captain Nathan Hale was executed by the British for spying. While Hale is credited with saying “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” the story descends from an eyewitness account by John Montresor, a British soldier who spoke soon after the execution with the American officer William Hull about Hale’s comportment. Some scholars believe that the now-famous mot is a burnishing of the less-well-measured “I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.”
In any case, executed for spying: what are the odds?
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