End of ObamaCare and Mortality Deadline

 J.Oberlander, PhD, a health expert at the University of North Caroline, has ana article in the January 5 New England Journal of Medicine.  It is entitled "The End of ObamaCare."   Oberlander says that with the Trump election, ObamaCare is dead and awaits Republican replacement.  In his concluding paragraph. he says, :The ACA's enactment represented a major toward making health  care a right in the United States. Now after another landmark election, health care reform in the Untied States is headed backward."

This is his opinion and is not shared by the majority of the American public, who, in over 95% of polls disfavored ObamaCare because of its failed promises, spiking premiums, unaffordable deductibles,  and narrowing of choice of doctors, hospitals, and health plans.

Another reason may be the ACA's ineffectiveness in improving the health of the majority of Americans.   The latest evidence of this is the Center of Disease's announcement that the average mortality of Americans declined from 7,89. to 78.8 years in 2015,  the first such drop in living memory.  This decline occurred after 7 years of ObamaCare, whikch was designed to achieve a triple
aim- better health, lower premiums, and enhanced collaboration between health care providers.

What's going on? According to the CDC, the spike in death rates and the decline in mortality is due mostly to obesity (35% of us are obese) and its aftermaths - diabetes. heart failure, and strokes, and to the opioid and heroin epidemic (30,000 deaths in 2015).

These deaths are not necessarily due to ObamaCare, but to cultural factors - overeating carbohydrate-rich diets, lack of exercise, and to economic despair secondary to a slow growth economy, and over-reliance on opioids and cheap heroin to treat pain.tes or regulate health in the face of a slow economy, and ats attendant poverty, social disarrage and violence,  paritisan political divisons.  Nor does enhanced coverage of health care form 20 million SAmericans necessarity ensure better health. lower death rates, or collaboration between health provides.  Health care coverage is not the same as increased access to care , in face of reluectance of doctors to accept more Medicare or Medicaid patients,  unaffordable premium, , co-pays, and deductibles.