How Many Die For Lack Of Insurance? Ctd

Tyler Cowen favors Medicaid expansion over the health care mandate:

It's one thing to count up "lives saved from insurance" but a lot of those lives are, in ex ante terms, actually made worse off from the mandate.  Some recent research indicates that an economic downturn saves the lives of a lot of lower-middle class individuals by limiting their consumption of cigarettes.  Surely the first question is whether the downturn makes those individuals better off -- doubtful -- and not whether it saves some of their lives.

Stan Dorn, who authored an Urban Institute study on health insurance and mortality, has weighted in at Ezra Klein's place, and Megan goes another round over first-dollar coverage.

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