death by folk libertarianism
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nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Mike Czup unspooled the hose to wash his hearse. It was time to pick up the body of yet another neighbor who had died in the prime of life.
Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries are younger than him, as residents in this once-thriving coal town are dying earlier and earlier.
In the past six months, Czup has arranged the funerals of a 37-year-old killed by complications from diabetes, a 54-year-old killed by lung disease and a 54-year-old killed by a stroke, among many others who died prematurely.
Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries are younger than him, as residents in this once-thriving coal town are dying earlier and earlier.
In the past six months, Czup has arranged the funerals of a 37-year-old killed by complications from diabetes, a 54-year-old killed by lung disease and a 54-year-old killed by a stroke, among many others who died prematurely.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
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.
Ashtabula’s problems stand out compared with two nearby counties — Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered — conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures.
Ashtabula’s problems stand out compared with two nearby counties — Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered — conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
That pattern held true during the coronavirus pandemic, when Ashtabula residents died of covid at far higher rates than people in Chautauqua and Erie.
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 largely controlled 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.
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 largely controlled 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.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
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.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Public health officials say Ohio could save lives by adopting measures such as a higher tobacco tax or stricter seat-belt rules, initiatives supported by Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican generally friendly to their cause.
“I told the legislature, ‘I’m going to ask you to invest in things where you’re not going to see the results during your term in office and I’m not going to see it during my term in office,’” DeWine said in an interview in the governor’s mansion.
But those proposals have repeatedly stalled in a state legislature controlled by Republicans for 27 of the past 29 years and whose leaders show little inclination to move aggressively now.
DeWine has a “nanny state” mentality, said Ohio state Rep. Bill Seitz, the state House majority floor leader and fellow Republican who has helped block tobacco tax increases amid aggressive lobbying by industry interests. The 68-year-old Seitz, who smoked for 50 years before developing kidney cancer and having a kidney removed this summer, said he’s unmoved by his own brush with the health system — even if it led him to finally kick the habit.
“I’m not going to turn into a smoke Nazi just because I used to smoke and I don’t anymore,” Seitz said.
“I told the legislature, ‘I’m going to ask you to invest in things where you’re not going to see the results during your term in office and I’m not going to see it during my term in office,’” DeWine said in an interview in the governor’s mansion.
But those proposals have repeatedly stalled in a state legislature controlled by Republicans for 27 of the past 29 years and whose leaders show little inclination to move aggressively now.
DeWine has a “nanny state” mentality, said Ohio state Rep. Bill Seitz, the state House majority floor leader and fellow Republican who has helped block tobacco tax increases amid aggressive lobbying by industry interests. The 68-year-old Seitz, who smoked for 50 years before developing kidney cancer and having a kidney removed this summer, said he’s unmoved by his own brush with the health system — even if it led him to finally kick the habit.
“I’m not going to turn into a smoke Nazi just because I used to smoke and I don’t anymore,” Seitz said.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Faced with Ashtabula’s declining life expectancy, Czup worries about what it means for his own family, especially his two adult children. He thinks about a 34-year-old he buried last fall, whom Czup once coached on a YMCA youth basketball team. The child’s parents never missed a game; decades later, they had to attend his funeral.
“That was just so heartbreaking because I could be in their shoes,” Czup said. “This could be my son having a heart attack at 34.”
“That was just so heartbreaking because I could be in their shoes,” Czup said. “This could be my son having a heart attack at 34.”
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Thirty years ago, Ohio’s health outcomes were on par with California’s, with nearly identical death rates for adults in the prime of life — ranking in the middle among the 50 states. But the two states’ outcomes have diverged, along with their political leanings, said Ellen Meara, a health economics and policy professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has studied why death rates fell in California, home to some of the nation’s most progressive politics, while they scarcely budged in increasingly conservative Ohio. By 2017, California had the nation’s second-lowest mortality rates, falling behind only Minnesota; Ohio ranked 41st, according to The Post analysis.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
For example, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said about 500 people lose their lives every year in car accidents in which those killed were not wearing seat belts, a problem that has outraged groups such as the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety as well as the 76-year-old governor, who has spent decades pushing to improve motor vehicle safety. DeWine lost his 22-year-old daughter, Becky, to a car accident in 1993.
“Our job, it seems to me, is to do everything we can to spare families the tragedy of losing someone, losing a child, losing a loved one,” DeWine said.
But House Republicans in April blocked DeWine’s proposal to allow police officers to pull over cars when they see drivers or their passengers not wearing seat belts. In contrast, New York in 1984 became the first state to enact such a law, followed by 34 others.
State data shows that seat-belt use has fallen in Ohio to its lowest level in 18 years — with fewer than 81 percent of residents regularly buckling up, compared with 92 percent of Americans as a whole — worrying officials who say the decline is preventable, inexplicable and contributes to greater risk. A Post analysis shows that Ashtabula residents are twice as likely to die of motor vehicle accidents as are people in Chautauqua.
“Our job, it seems to me, is to do everything we can to spare families the tragedy of losing someone, losing a child, losing a loved one,” DeWine said.
But House Republicans in April blocked DeWine’s proposal to allow police officers to pull over cars when they see drivers or their passengers not wearing seat belts. In contrast, New York in 1984 became the first state to enact such a law, followed by 34 others.
State data shows that seat-belt use has fallen in Ohio to its lowest level in 18 years — with fewer than 81 percent of residents regularly buckling up, compared with 92 percent of Americans as a whole — worrying officials who say the decline is preventable, inexplicable and contributes to greater risk. A Post analysis shows that Ashtabula residents are twice as likely to die of motor vehicle accidents as are people in Chautauqua.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
In Ohio, as in much of America, the fate of measures that can save lives boils down to a familiar tension: individualism vs. the public good.
Christine Hill, health commissioner for Ashtabula City, said some constituents have urged her to get government out of their health care. She has even heard that argument at home: When Ohio debated an indoor smoking ban in the mid-2000s that ultimately passed, she and her husband landed on opposite sides — and planted dueling signs on either side of their driveway.
Her husband doesn’t even smoke, Hill said, but “he doesn’t want the government to tell him what to do.”
Hill had previously pushed the city council to pass an ordinance in 2002 to fine businesses that sell cigarettes to underage customers. But the city’s ordinance is one that the Ohio legislature was looking to strip when Seitz and his colleagues passed a bill last year preventing cities from imposing stricter tobacco regulations, before DeWine vetoed the legislation in January and nixed a similar measure in July.
Christine Hill, health commissioner for Ashtabula City, said some constituents have urged her to get government out of their health care. She has even heard that argument at home: When Ohio debated an indoor smoking ban in the mid-2000s that ultimately passed, she and her husband landed on opposite sides — and planted dueling signs on either side of their driveway.
Her husband doesn’t even smoke, Hill said, but “he doesn’t want the government to tell him what to do.”
Hill had previously pushed the city council to pass an ordinance in 2002 to fine businesses that sell cigarettes to underage customers. But the city’s ordinance is one that the Ohio legislature was looking to strip when Seitz and his colleagues passed a bill last year preventing cities from imposing stricter tobacco regulations, before DeWine vetoed the legislation in January and nixed a similar measure in July.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
But from DeWine’s perspective, government is essential to protecting the public. As a Republican governor, former member of Congress and former Ohio attorney general, he has pushed for measures such as stricter seat-belt laws, poison control hotlines, tighter coronavirus restrictions and protecting opioid settlement money — sometimes in opposition to his own party.
“I think that one of the central functions of government is to preserve life,” DeWine said, sitting in the study of the governor’s mansion.
A photo that’s more than 30 years old sticks out among the myriad family pictures displayed throughout the home: the DeWines gathered around a Nativity scene in their kitchen. It was the last Christmas they were all together before Becky’s fatal car accident. DeWine’s personal philosophy on weighing public health vs. personal freedom is also shaped by that loss. That tragedy, he said, “focuses you on what matters in life.”
The governor acknowledged he has much to do in his remaining three years in office. He said he plans to focus on “what we know will lengthen life, what we know will give people the opportunity to live up to their potential,” such as prenatal and postnatal care, early-childhood education and other measures targeting Ohio’s youngest residents. Much of his efforts, he said, will not pay off in his political lifetime.
“I think that one of the central functions of government is to preserve life,” DeWine said, sitting in the study of the governor’s mansion.
A photo that’s more than 30 years old sticks out among the myriad family pictures displayed throughout the home: the DeWines gathered around a Nativity scene in their kitchen. It was the last Christmas they were all together before Becky’s fatal car accident. DeWine’s personal philosophy on weighing public health vs. personal freedom is also shaped by that loss. That tragedy, he said, “focuses you on what matters in life.”
The governor acknowledged he has much to do in his remaining three years in office. He said he plans to focus on “what we know will lengthen life, what we know will give people the opportunity to live up to their potential,” such as prenatal and postnatal care, early-childhood education and other measures targeting Ohio’s youngest residents. Much of his efforts, he said, will not pay off in his political lifetime.