Report: Repealing Obamacare Will Not Cost Lives

New studies reveal that, despite the dramatic rhetoric from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, repealing Obamacare will not cost thousands of lives.

Prominent Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren recently claimed that thousands will die if Republicans manage to repeal Obamacare.

Incredibly, Bernie Sanders argued that “As Republicans try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they should be reminded every day that 36,000 people will die yearly as a result.”

To the contrary, Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, claims that not only will Americans not die by having Republicans repeal parts of Obamacare — American mortality rates rose under Obamacare.

In Cass’s report, he details that in 2015, under Obamacare, age-adjusted mortality rates and life expectancy went down for the first time since the early 1990s. In an article in National Review, Cass writes, “Had mortality continued to decline during ACA implementation in 2014 and 2015 at the same rate as during the 2000–13 period, 80,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2015 alone.”

Not only have mortality rates increased under Obamacare, most estimates show that Obamacare has not saved lives. Cass states, “The best statistical estimate for the number of lives saved each year by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is zero.”

The Manhattan Institute senior fellow explains that Obamacare primarily increased health insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid, which scholars argue is less effective than private insurance for improving Americans’ health. Cass explains that in Oregon, researchers found no increased health outcomes from expanded Medicaid. Even worse, mortality rates in 2015 rose 50 percent faster in the 26 states that expanded Medicaid compared to states that did not expand Medicaid.

Cass argues that retaining Obamacare is more detrimental to Americans health than repealing Obamacare. He said, “If one wants to claim dramatic effects from ambiguous data, it is easier to argue that the ACA is killing people. A more reasonable conclusion for partisans of all stripes to accept is merely that the ACA is not saving lives.”