Ask A Genius 571 – Cored Out: Corruption of a State and a Party
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/15
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Rick Rosner: So, we lost the signal yesterday when I was saying that in Trump’s four years in office, three quarters of a million more Americans will have died under four years, under any other president. Only a third of that population is slightly bigger now than under any other president. So, half a million more Americans will have died under Trump, not because of population reasons, but because of Covid, because of opioids, because of suicide, because of the consequences of obesity. It is a miserable time in America. Trump promised to fix a lot of these things. He’s done virtually nothing. His lies about fixing everything aside. But to put it in proper perspective, about three million Americans, a little less than three million Americans die every year just from everything. Cancer, heart disease, accidents, because a little less than 1% of the nation passes away every year.
So that extra seven hundred and fifty thousand dead under Trump represents about a 6% higher death rate than under previous presidents, which is bad. I mean 6, a several % reduction in life expectancy. It is all bad, though. Life expectancy has been heading downwards for probably about the past four years. This year, it was picked up by a tenth of a year. But it was unheard of until started ticking downwards at all. I don’t think it had done it in America at all in the past 30 years. Though, I haven’t looked at the statistics. But, generally, you expect lifespans to be increasing and it is an indicator of the misery in America now.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is part of this, due to an increase in suicides among white middle aged men?
Rosner: Yes, and not just middle aged, but younger than middle aged. You’ve got a lot of military and ex-military suicides. You’ve got deaths that may or may not be suicide among people who have opioid issues.
Jacobsen: There should be one caveat there. Individuals who enter the army or are coerced into the army are disproportionately of minority ethnic groups or poor whites?
Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: Those in poverty across the board have less access to mental healthcare and just general care for mental health.
Rosner: It should be available.
Jacobsen: Well, it is not.
Rosner: Carole and I have gone to couples counseling for 27 years and are ensuring once a month because we’re not really fighting all the time. It’s like doing relationship push ups. You do the work.
Jacobsen: It is maintenance.
Rosner: But our insurance paid for fucking 27 years of therapy, which is insane. I mean, it is not insane for a sophisticated country with a good medical system, an insane perk. But most Americans don’t have it. Most Americans should have it. Other countries have it. But we’re among the lucky few, I’m as a TV writer. I’m represented by a great and powerful union. So, I have stuff that other Americans don’t have. It just shows that the dark shitty access to medicine is reflected in our lower life expectancies. Other things that reflect that we’re more obese than almost every other developed country. But our medical access, countries like Japan, I think the expected lifespan is like five years longer than ours. I, personally, know of two people who are facing life threatening diseases and in one case died of a life threatening disease because they had to wait until Medicare kicked in at age 65. They had serious problems that they didn’t want to take to the doctor until they had medical coverage. In the case of one guy, it killed him. So, maybe, having Biden in there, and possibly winning back the Senate, it won’t fix everything or even maybe much of anything.
We got to get Trump out of there with the Republicans. In 2009, the Democrats more or less had the Senate, the House, and the presidency. The only thing that got done in terms of big changes was Obamacare. Republicans have spent the last decade voting to kill it every month or two. They’ve voted to kill it 70 times or the lawsuits to kill it will hit the Supreme Court in early November. If Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed, it is likely that the Supreme Court will kill Obamacare after ten years of Republicans trying to kill it for no good reason, except that Republicans are wildly corrupt and in the pockets of rich donors and rich donors get to hold on to more money, apparently.
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