I suggest reading the whole article. If I didn't try to respect intellectual property rights, I would put the whole article in this post, a lot of valuable information.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/tl-pss020921.php
News Release 11-Feb-2021
The Lancet
The first comprehensive assessment of the health effects of Donald Trump's presidency is published today in The Lancet revealing devastating impacts on every aspect of health in the USA. The Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era [1] also traces the policy failures that preceded and fueled Trump's ascent and left the USA lagging behind other high-income nations on life expectancy.
In new analyses, the Commission finds that 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018, and 40% of US deaths during 2020 from COVID-19 would have been averted if the USA had death rates equivalent to those of the other G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom). The report also estimates that Trump's rollbacks of environmental protections led to 22,000 excess deaths in 2019 alone.
The Commission finds that US life expectancy began trailing other high-income nations' in about 1980 as President Ronald Reagan initiated anti-government, wealth-concentrating policies that reversed many of the advances of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. Reagan's political philosophy, known as neo-liberalism, has continued to influence US health and economic policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Many Trump policies, including tax cuts and deregulation that benefit the wealthy and corporations, austerity for the poor, and privatization of Medicare, emulate Reagan's.
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The report also condemns Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) and defunding of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) - bodies critical for pandemic response globally - and his undermining of global health efforts prior to the pandemic.
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While the Commission initially intended to focus narrowly on the health
effects of the Trump administration, its analyses revealed that
deep-seated problems that preceded Trump had undermined health and set
the stage for his political ascent. Trump gained his largest 2016
electoral margins in counties with the worst economic and mortality
trends; in counties where Trump got more than 60% of the vote, life
expectancy had been better in 1980 than in those where he was soundly
defeated. By the time of his presidential run, life expectancy in the
pro-Trump counties was 2 years shorter than in counties where he was
defeated.
The Commission concludes that Trump exploited low- and middle-income white people's anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilize racial animus and xenophobia; he then enlisted their support for policies that benefit wealthy individuals and corporations and threaten the health of most Americans, including Trump's supporters.
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The Commission found that Trump's actions added 2.3 million to the 28
million US residents who were uninsured when he took office, with
coverage losses concentrated in minority communities and among children.
An additional 726,000 children became uninsured during his time in
office. Meanwhile, he augmented the flow of public funds through private
insurers, who now derive most of their revenues from government
programs, raise Medicare's costs by an estimated $24 billion annually,
and have garnered record profits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Commission cites Trump's acceleration of global warming through encouragement of fossil fuel combustion and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement as perhaps his longest lasting harm. It details his roll back of at least 84 separate environmental and workplace protections. Ironically, US states that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 have suffered the greatest increases in pollution and in deaths from environmental and occupational causes. In 2019 alone, the Commission estimates that 22,000 more Americans died from environmental and occupationally related causes than in 2016, the first time such deaths have increased after 15 years of steady progress.
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"Our ICU is the last stop for many patients harmed by Trump's disdain for facts, science, and compassion," says Commission member Dr Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School "But decades of health care inequality, privatization and profiteering set the stage for these tragedies. Our Commission has concluded that single payer, Medicare for All reform is the only way forward."
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