IT BLAMES TRUMP, OF COURSE: “Report: 40% of US COVID deaths could have been avoided.”

What this Fox News article doesn’t point out is that the “experts” involved in this study–Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein–are the authors of a string of outlandish, highly politicized “studies.”

Jeff Jacoby wrote about their rent control study back in 1995. He quotes Woolhandler:

“‘If rent control vanishes, dozens will die,’ said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an internist at Cambridge Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School….

“‘One-third of our heart attack patients at Cambridge Hospital live in rent-controlled apartments. By allowing landlords to force them out, the governor and state Legislature are implementing the death penalty—a social policy sure to kill.’”

Jacoby also quotes Himmelstein:

“As doctors,” pronounces Dr. David Himmelstein, “we don’t have the power to change the law or get a person another apartment. But we do have the power to appeal to the moral consciousness of politicians as well as landlords.”

As Jacoby put it in 1995: “If only conservatives could be as sensitive and morally refined as Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein. Then they would realize how massive the death toll can be when liberals don’t get their way.”

Woolhandler and Himmelstein were also the authors (along with then Prof. Elizabeth Warren) of an over-hyped study of bankruptcy that wildly claimed that half of all bankruptcies stem from illness or injury. My response to that one is here.

It’s surprising to me how these folks manage to get so much attention for their work.  But they definitely do.