This Times article on rising mortality had me thinking about regional disparities. It's true that rising mortality is widespread, but the article also acknowledges that mortality in coastal metros has improved 1/ nytimes.com/2019/11/26/hea…
So I did some comparisons using the KFF health system tracker healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collecti… and a JAMA article on life expectancy by state in 1990 and 2016 2/ jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
What we see is another red-blue divide. Compare population-weighted averages for states that supported Clinton and Trump in 2016, and you see very different trends 3/ 
This is NOT simply a matter of declining regions voting for Trump. Look at the 4 biggest states: in 1990 FL and TX both had higher life expectancy than NY, now they're well behind 4/
I'm not sure what lies behind this. Medicaid expansion probably plays a role in the past few years, and general harshness of social policies in red states may matter more over time. Divergence in education levels may also play a role 5/
What's clear, however, is that the US life-expectancy problem is pretty much a red-state problem. In terms of mortality, blue states look like the rest of the advanced world 5/
