Let me start with a letter to the
editor I submitted to the Salt Lake Tribune that appeared in this morning’s edition
(May 6, 2026):
“A New York Times article dated
May 1, 2026, reports that millions of Americans are dropping their health
insurance because the Republican Congress ended Obamacare subsidies that had
been in place since 2021. Obviously, Democrats care about providing healthcare
to American citizens. Their attempt to do that is called the Affordable Care
Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare.
“What is the Republican healthcare plan called? Well, nothing, because there isn’t one. So maybe we should call the Republican healthcare absence ‘Trumpdoesn’tcare,’ because Trump doesn’t care about your health care or mine. And neither do his sock puppets in Congress, including all six of Utah’s representatives. They were perfectly happy not just to let the subsidies lapse but also to cut Medicaid benefits for the poor and needy.
“Unfortunately, there are lots of
other things Trump doesn’t care about. For instance: inflation, gas prices,
pollution, global warming, the federal debt, the Constitution, rural hospitals,
Ukraine, harmonious relationships with our former allies, fraud (look at his
pardons), voting rights, his own supporters in blue states who are suffering
from natural disasters, fair elections, and on and on and on.
“But what does Trump care about?
First and foremost, his highly unpopular ballroom. Also, Putin’s approval; the
obeisance of billionaires, getting away with murder on the high seas, gaudy gold
trinkets received illegally from foreign countries, prosecuting his political ‘enemies,’
and the appearance of winning, even when he has no moral or legal way of getting
us out of his ill-advised war on Iran. Oh yes, and he cares about the Epstein
files. Not releasing them, of course, but burying them. We can’t help but
wonder what they contain that is so threatening to him.
“Anyway, if you think Trump cares
about you, think again.”
Paul Krugman, in today’s Substack
post, which I receive as an email subscriber, addressed the widening divide
between the life expectancy of blue vs. red counties in America and proposed
some reasons for the discrepancy. First, some figures. If you live in one of
the top 10 percent of counties with the reddest population (Republican), would
be 2.71 times as likely to die from COVID (since May 1, 2021) as a person
residing in one of the top 10 percent of blue counties (Democrat). Life
expectancy follows a similar pattern. If you live in a red state, your life
expectancy is significantly lower than if you live in a blue state. Alabama and
West Virginia, for instance, have a life expectancy comparable to Kazakhstan. Why
this correlation? Well, Krugman gives a few reasons.
“Part of the answer,” he says, “is
that red states have weak social safety nets and are especially unwilling to
provide healthcare to vulnerable populations. . . . Many red states refused to
expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal
government would have borne the bulk of the cost. Texas, which likes to boast
about its economic success, leads the nation in the share of its children who
lack health insurance.”
Also, right-wing politics has
become generally hostile to science, especially medical science. Why? I suppose
it has something to do with the conservative bias against education and
experts. But there’s also a misguided devotion to individual liberty among
conservatives, at the expense of the public good. So, during the pandemic, not
only were Republicans more distrustful of vaccines, but they were also more
unwilling to follow health guidelines that recommended the wearing of masks. In
other words, they were more concerned about their own freedom to not mask or
vaccinate than about the health and well-being of their neighbors or their
communities, not to mention themselves. This is relevant to Utah’s current
measles outbreak, which I’ll return to in a moment.
Krugman also points out that greed
and willful ignorance play a big role in health disparities. “The best example
of scientific disinformation promoted by corporate interests is the
fossil-fuel-financed attack on climate science, but the template for this
attack was the earlier campaign by the tobacco industry’s ‘merchants of doubt’
to discredit evidence that smoking is harmful to your health. The straight line
from this campaign to the [recent] relaxation of rules on flavored vapes is
obvious.”
He mentions that the role of greed
in the anti-vaxx movement is less obvious, but we should recognize the outsize
role of “quack medicine” in conservative media. “Right-wing radio and social
media have long relied on peddlers of snake oil for a large part of their
revenue. So much of the attack on medical science can be seen as financially
motivated.” Think of Alex Jones or Mormonism’s own Glenn Beck.
Krugman warns not to “discount the
role of willful ignorance driven by ideology. The modern U.S. right is, to a
large extent, an alliance between oligarchs and white Christian nationalists—and the latter are
deeply hostile to Enlightenment values, modern science very much included.” And
this is where the Mormon measles outbreak comes into play.
You might think, since the Church
is a strong supporter of vaccinations of all stripes, spending millions of
dollars to make vaccines available to underserved populations, that Latter-day
Saints would be among the most vaccinated people in America. But you would
think wrong. I’ve argued in this forum before that a lot of my coreligionists
are more Republican than they are Mormon, but it is unfortunately true. Many
Mormons thumbed their noses at President Nelson’s urgent plea regarding masks
and vaccines during the pandemic, and now they discount the Church’s strong
statement in its Handbook supporting vaccination. Consequently, we are having a
large outbreak of measles in certain highly-LDS counties in Utah, especially
Washington County. This is inexcusable. It is willful ignorance. The overwhelming
scientific consensus supporting the safety of vaccines is undeniable, but many
Mormons, including some of my friends and neighbors, would rather get their
information from unreliable sources. The result is sickness and, possibly,
death. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses, and we had pretty well 86’d
it, to use a popular metaphor. But it is back with a vengeance, because there
is nothing more powerful in modern society than disinformation.
I can speak with a little authority
on measles. I contracted the disease as a third-grader, and I can still
remember a miserable Christmas school vacation, when I spent the whole two
weeks lying on the couch, miserable. Fortunately, I had no serious complications,
but many are not so lucky. Measles can kill and cause permanent impairment, but
it can also reset your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to other diseases
you were previously protected against. I’m old enough that the vaccine wasn’t
used widely when I was young, so I now have natural immunity, as well as the
additional immunity provided by several MMR inoculations. I also had chicken
pox, mumps, and Rubella. So, I have pretty strong feelings about the benefits
of vaccines.
I won’t offer here my advice to
Church leaders, who have been almost completely silent on this issue,
especially the current measles outbreak. Sam Brunson covered that angle very thoroughly
in a recent By Common Consent post. Please read his commentary.
Anyway, here we are. Utah currently
has the second worst measles outbreak in the U.S.; Americans have a life
expectancy of 79 years, which is a full five years lower than citizens of Italy
and Sweden; and if you live in a red state, it’s even lower. But guess what?
Trump really doesn’t care.
