The GOP is killing its own base among old people

This isn't about vaccine-rejection and anti-masking hysteria. This was pre-COVID:

In this national analysis [from the BMJ - a peer reviewed publication from the trade union of the British Medical Association], we found that Americans living in counties that voted Democratic during presidential elections from 2000 to 2016 experienced lower age adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) than residents of counties that voted for a Republican candidate, and these patterns were consistent across subgroups (sex, race and ethnicity, urban-rural location). The gap in overall AAMR between Democratic and Republican counties increased more than sixfold from 2001 to 2019, driven primarily by changes in deaths due to heart disease, cancer, lower respiratory tract diseases, unintentional injuries, and suicide.

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 "Unintentional injuries" is a euphemism for opioid deaths.

It's not so much that old Republicans were dying of different causes than old Democrats -- both were mostly afflicted by heart disease, cancer, and cardio-vascular ailments. But Democratic counties did a better job of reducing mortality among their old people, based on such factors as Medicaid expansion (access to health insurance coverage), stronger tobacco and gun control, and more generous social welfare systems in general.

It does seem counter-productive -- no, ghoulish -- for a political party to cooperate in killing off its supporters.

H/t commenters at Emptywheel.