WARNING: BOOK LEARNIN' PEOPLE INVOLVED - Harvard study shows Medicaid expansion improves health

In a study sure to be derided by our Mississippi Republican cognoscenti (here's a link so they can look that word up) as something from the northern-librul-iv'ry tower-socialist-smarty pants gays, Harvard researchers have documented a decline in death rates in New York, Arizona, and Maine, three states that expanded Medicaid coverage in 2001.  From the Bloomberg article:

Three states that expanded Medicaid in 2001 and 2002, New York, Arizona and Maine (BSTIME), collectively saw a 6.1 percent decline in the death rate for people age 20 to 64 compared to neighboring states, according to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, led by assistant professor Benjamin Sommers, found larger reductions among minorities and low-income people.

Last I checked, lowering the death rate was a good thing.  And to make it an even better deal, the federal government is going to pick up the whole tab on the expansion through 2017, and nearly all of it going forward.  But hey, why take taxpayer money from California and New York money to build our medical infrastructure when we can make a point about how conservative we are?