The Washington Post took a look at the negitive politics/policies of Republican led state’s on many things including Covid, Abortion, Healthcare, availability Seat Belts laws and more…..
Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States’ politics — and their resulting policies — are shaving years off American lives….
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The differences around Lake Erie reflect a steady national shift in how public health decisions are being made and who’s making them.
State lawmakers gained autonomy over how to spend federal safety net dollars following Republican President Ronald Reagan’s push to empower the states in the 1980s. Those investments began to diverge sharply along red and blue lines, with conservative lawmakers often balking at public health initiatives they said cost too much or overstepped. Today, people in the South and Midwest, regions largelycontrolled by Republican state legislators, have increasingly higher chances of dying prematurely compared with those in the more Democratic Northeast and West, according to The Post’s analysis of death rates…
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The differences in state policies directly correlate to those years lost, said Jennifer Karas Montez, director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies at Syracuse University and author of several papers that describe the connection between politics and life expectancy.
Ohio sticks out — for all the wrong reasons. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, according to Montez’s analysis using the state’s 2019 death rates. The state, whose legislature has been increasingly dominated by Republicans, has plummeted nationally when it comes to life expectancy rates, moving from middle of the pack to the bottom fifth of states during the last 50 years, The Post found. Ohioans have a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries….
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To health advocates and the legislators, the fight over what’s known as preemption — state lawmakers passing legislation to stop local governments from implementing policies such as harsher cigarette taxes or stricter gun laws — is part of the existential battle over the direction of the state.
Republican lawmakers have increasingly deployed preemption laws to hamstring the ability of cities and counties to make health mandates that could save some residents, according to legal experts.
[Ohio GOP state Rep] Seitz defended Ohio Republicans’ efforts to limit cities’ powers, saying it’s in keeping with his party’s philosophy: “We’re for local control, but we’re not for local out of control.”
After all, he argued, lawmakers must balance safety with liberty. “Are we all going to be in a little bubble where no germs can infect us and no bad things can happen to us?” he asked…..