“On Monday, though, a beautiful study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine that provides some of the best data we have connecting health coverage to saved lives. It’s changed my thinking, too. I’m more confident than I was last week that the ACA will save many thousands of lives every year.

Ironically, the study examined the impact of the bipartisan insurance expansion enacted in Massachusetts in 2006—a.k.a. “RomneyCare,” which provided the basic model for the ACA. Three of the best researchers in the business—Benjamin Sommers, Sharon Long and Katherine Baicker examined a decade’s worth of mortality data in Massachusetts counties, comparing trends to those found in carefully chosen comparison counties in other states. This wasn’t a randomized trial, but it was the next best thing, tracking the experiences of hundreds of thousands of people for years before and after the enactment of Massachusetts’ reforms.

Here’s their bottom-line result: Insurance coverage reduced mortality rates by about 30 percent.”* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Harold Pollack / Politico:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/the-deadliest-republican-policy-yet-106453.html#.U22Xmq1dVV4