[echelon]

Look at how much of the developing world has been pulled out of poverty in the last 30 years. Look at the infant mortality rates.

We're looking at the wrong data points.

> It's lack of access to affordable healthcare,

When the leading cause of mortality is heart disease, the solution is not more affordable healthcare. It's healthy eating and living.

When the next leading cause is cancer, the solution is more research not more affordable healthcare.

When the next leading cause is "accidents", and those are then broken down into "poisoning", "falls", and "automotive", the solutions are again not health insurance. Autonomous vehicles will do more to solve automotive mortality than changes to the health insurance industry.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

https://www.statista.com/statistics/526300/deaths-number-uni...

[topaz0]

I think you'd be surprised by how many of those deaths would have been preventable by earlier healthcare access. Just medicaid expansion reduced all-cause mortality rates by about 3% on average, compared to non-expansion states. That's all-cause mortality of the whole population, not just among the people on medicaid.

Of course you're right that it would be much more effective to eliminate poverty than to just provide healthcare. For example that would do a lot for the "healthy eating and living" that you mention. But providing healthcare would certainly help.