Charles P Pierce - The Sicker You Are, The More Free You Are

[n2doc]

In which we learn that the ultimate measure of human freedom is diabetes.

There was an interesting story in The New York Times yesterday, on the fifth anniversary of the president's signing of the Affordable Care Act, about one of the undeniably beneficial results of the act's passage into law. It seems that, in those states that have condescended to accept FREE MONEY!, the Medicaid expansion has managed not only to help sick people to get well, but also to keep healthy people from becoming sick.

The health care law aimed to bring many of the most disadvantaged Americans into the medical system by expanding access to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. But with the release of federal health data still months away, it was impossible to know whether the new coverage was having any effect in identifying and treating critical health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure. In the new study by Quest Diagnostics, a medical testing company, researchers analyzed laboratory test results from all 50 states in the company's large database over two six-month periods. In the states that expanded Medicaid, the number of Medicaid enrollees with newly identified diabetes rose by 23 percent, to 18,020 in the first six months of 2014, from 14,625 in the same period in 2013. The diagnoses rose by only 0.4 percent — to 11,653 from 11,612 — in the states that did not expand Medicaid.

For months, as people screamed in the streets, and as politicians who damn well knew better stirred them up, the people trying to get the law passed stubbornly argued that one of its underrated virtues was that it encouraged preventative care that some people otherwise could not afford. This was a practical way to "bend the cost curve" one life at a time. As the Times points out, Diabetes is one of the most expensive diseases to treat, and the earlier you catch it, the easier it is to plan how to keep it from bankrupting you and your family. Which is where the FREE MONEY! comes in.

Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, said earlier detection — particularly among the poor, who are more likely to have the disease without knowing it — is the first step in preventing some of the most severe long-term consequences and saving dollars and lives. He pointed out that diabetes rates tended to be highest in the Southern states that did not expand Medicaid, and that full insurance coverage there would likely produce an even stronger effect. "This suggests that states that are accepting this kind of coverage are doing their populations a huge favor," he said, adding that the health care law was the most plausible explanation for the findings. "I couldn't find anything that sounded like a false note," he said of the study.

Now is the point where we remind people that, by the logic of every single Republican politician of any note, and especially by the logic of the party's only declared presidential nominee, the people who discover early that they have diabetes because the states they live in accepted the FREE MONEY! are less free than the people who wake up in some place like "Bobby" Jindal's Louisiana, who discover that they've gone blind and that their kidneys have turned to Titleist 2's.

more

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33865/diabetes-is-a-reason-to-repeal-obamacare/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Wish they had a break down of that study since it looks like Arkansas is

about to withdraw their 'private option' (hybird Medicad expansion) for 190,000 people. Arkansas ranks about 3rd. in the number of diabetics it has.