Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) joins with Dr. Ben Carson in demonstrating how being able to obtain a medical degree does not necessarily translate into being an intelligent or informed person. Case in point, his convoluted contention that both the decrease in life expectancy in the U.S. for the first time in decades and the opioid epidemic are Obamacare’s fault. Apparently for no other reason than they all happened at the same time.
Cassidy was interviewed at a Washington Post event where he was interviewed about health stuff because he’s a doctor. Here’s what he said when asked about declining life expectancy: “We were told that people were dying because they didn’t have health insurance. Now we have record numbers of people insured and our mortality rate has increased and life expectancy has decreased. [...] It kind of gives lie to the fact that somehow we’re going to enter into a wonderful new world once Obamacare was implemented.” Causation. Correlation. Whatever. He’s a Republican, he does’t have to get it.
Then he said that Obamacare is causing the opioid epidemic because of things that didn’t actually happen—all these people had their hours cut by employers avoiding the mandate (not true), and that made them depressed and then “those folks perhaps going on disability, those folks perhaps becoming addicted to opiates. I can go on, but it’s easy to imagine.” Jeffrey Young summarizes Cassidy’s line of what we’ll generously call “thought.”
This is how a United States senator, who is a doctor, explains a decline in life expectancy. Take a moment and contemplate the chain of events Cassidy outlined:
- President Barack Obama signs the Affordable Care Act (2010).
- Some companies reduce some employees’ hours when the “employer mandate” takes effect (2015).
- Despair. Something about disability benefits? (date unknown)
- America has an opioid addiction epidemic that now claims 78 lives a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000-2016).
- Bill Cassidy sits down with Marc Fisher for an interview (2016).
It’s also “easy to imagine” lots of things, because the human mind is an infinite playground.
More infinite when you’re a Republican, apparently.