Conservatives are accustomed to being accused by the Left of proposing policies that will “kill” thousands or millions of innocent Americans. As National Review mockingly compiled:

Repealing Obamacare will kill 24,000 people a year! No, 36,000! No, 43,000! The tax cuts are blood money!

The magic words underling these assertions are: “according to studies,” and with the Left owning academia, there are plenty of studies premised on ridiculous assumptions, liberally manipulated data, questionable logic, and unhedged conclusions to accuse small government types of being bloodthirsty, because more government is always the answer to human problems.

Perhaps it is time to turn their own weapon against them. My friend Mike Nadler writes:

Democrats have had a long and still active habit of accusing Republicans of promoting policies that will kill people, including running ads stating the same.  Well, a study just reported in JAMA Cardiology suggests that ObamaCare may have done just that.  I haven’t checked whether MSNBC, CNN, or the network news channels have reported on this. 

The Wall Street Journal is the only place Mike had seen reference this:

Liberals have touted data showing that readmissions have fallen since the penalties took effect in 2013, but the JAMA researchers examined whether quality of care has improved as a result. Their observational study examined 115,245 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with heart failure across the U.S. in the four years prior to and first two years following implementation of the program.

Researchers found that the 30-day readmission rate (adjusted for patient risk) declined to 18.4% from 20% after the penalties were introduced. Yet the 30-day mortality rate increased to 8.6% from 7.2%—about 5,400 additional deaths per year. Over a one-year period the readmission rate fell by 0.9 percentage points while the mortality rate rose by five. In other words, while fewer patients were being readmitted, many more were dying.

The logical chain here is quite strong: imposing penalties for re-admission of patients incentivizes them to deny re-admissions. So, people who do not receive follow-on care then die in larger numbers.

ObamaCare is killing thousands of Americans!

Oh, the humanity!

Let’s see how the progs like a taste of their own medicine.

Alinsky tells us that forcing the enemy to live up to its own rules is a great tactic. And since the Left owns the culture, the Deep State, the media, and the educational system, Alinsky works for us now.