“Over 70% of Americans who died with COVID, died on Medicare, and some people want Medicare for All?” the Republican wrote in a Wednesday morning tweet. Massie, who has been critical of mask and vaccine mandates throughout the ongoing pandemic, has long been an opponent of government-controlled health insurance.
He especially opposes Medicare for All, a proposed plan to replace public and private insurance plans with a more generous version of Medicare, the government health-insurance program that serves adults ages 65 and above. Medicare for All would expand the program to cover all Americans. Proponents say the plan would reduce healthcare costs and deaths related to the inaccessibility of healthcare.
Numerous people pointed out that Massie’s tweet mistook correlation for causation.
While 70 percent of Americans who died of COVID-19 might have been on Medicare, their deaths are likely due to the fact that people above the age of 65 have underlying conditions that have made them most susceptible to dying of COVID-19. That is, their age and other health problems likely contributed far more to their deaths than their treatment under Medicare did.
As a result, Massie’s tweet has been “ratioed,” a word for when a tweet receives more comments than retweets. As of early Wednesday evening, Massie’s tweet has received 2,223 retweets and 5,458 comments.
Newsweek contacted Massie’s office for comment.
“Because Covid severely impacted the elderly and the elderly are on Medicare,” Democratic Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego tweeted in response to Massie. “If you paid someone to come up with this tweet fire them. If you came up with this tweet you should hang your head in shame.”
Sports writer Dave Zirin tweeted, “People who die of heart attacks tend to have eaten meals within 24 hours of death. AND WE WANT FOOD FOR ALL?!?!?!?!?”
Twitter user @DebHyatt11 wrote, “Nearly 100% of Americans who have alcohol use disorders drank milk as children. Milk drinking causes alcoholism. Somebody never learned that correlation isn’t causations, but why would a science denier know that? SMH (shaking my head)”.
Another Twitter user, @NCVates wrote, “You’re onto something, Rep. Massie. A lot of people die in hospitals, so let’s get rid of them, too.”
Writer and activist Alex Howard, who uses the Twitter handle @digiphile, wrote, “It’s possible that an even higher proportion of the Americans who died from cancer or heart disease in 2020…were on Medicare, but that also has nothing to do with a public option for health insurance.”
Dr. Rob Davidson, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, tweeted, “Not sure which upsets me more, that you might actually think this is a logical statement, or that over 7k people liked this.”
