Life Expectancy in America Has Plunged Since Obamacare Became Law of the Land

Yes, read that headline again: Life expectancy in America has plunged since Obamacare was enacted, excuse me, deemed to have been passed and then signed into law right after then-Vice-President Joe Biden explained to President Barack Obama that his namesake healthcare program was, “a big f—–g deal.”

Federalizing and bureaucratizing one-fifth of the American economy at a cost of trillions of tax dollars should have resulted in at least a hint of measurable improvements in multiple measures of the health of the people of the United States, right?

So why has life expectancy — the most basic and indicative healthcare datapoint — plunged in America in the last decade? Before you say it, no, the plunge predates the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 1 million Americans.

Life expectancy did drop big-time in 2020 and 2021, according to a recent study by scholars at the University of Colorado and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) that, according to its abstract, found:

“[Life expectancy] decreased from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 years in 2020 and 76.60 years in 2021, a net loss of 2.26 years. In contrast, peer countries averaged a smaller decrease in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 (0.57 years) and a 0.28-year increase between 2020 and 2021, widening the gap in life expectancy between the United States and peer countries to more than five years.”

That’s not a drop in the bucket, to be sure because it represents the biggest contraction in life expectancy since 1943. But here’s something to think about — Obamacare had been up and fully functioning for nearly a decade when the pandemic hit.

Maybe more Americans would have died as a result of COVID had Obamacare not been in effect, maybe not. That can never be known now, but what is known now is that, notwithstanding Obamacare being in full force for years beforehand, life expectancy was going down before the pandemic.

In 2012, the first full year Obamacare was up and running with a functional website for enrollees to access, U.S. life expectancy was 78.8 years, according to data compiled by the Peterson Center on Health Care. The number was the same in 2013 and it actually bumped up to 78.9 in 2014.

But then came 2015 and the figure dropped to 78.7, held steady in 2016, then dropped again in 2017 to 78.6. It crept back up slightly in 2018 and 2019. Thus, in the six years prior to the pandemic, life expectancy among Americans fell three-tenths of a point.

Interestingly, beginning in 1981, the first year of the Reagan administration when life expectancy was 74.1, the figure climbed virtually every year until 2010, reaching 78.6 as Congress debated and approved Obamacare.

Now, to be clear, I am not arguing that life expectancy decreased solely as a result of Obamacare’s negative impact on health care delivery and the pandemic. Americans have been heading in the wrong direction for decades on a number of important measures, with increasing obesity and diabetes being perhaps the most visible.

As a people, we’ve become more sedentary, we consume vast quantities of fast food, we exercise less, and, as the cost of health care insurance and health care more generally has spiraled upward since 2010, we’ve availed ourselves of less medical attention.

But the numbers are clear: For the 30 years prior to the enactment of Obamacare, American life expectancy was headed steadily upward. In the decade following Obamacare’s enactment, life expectancy went down, especially so during the pandemic. The implication that Obamacare has been a net negative influence on American life expectancy must be considered.