by Tim Henderson
Indiana Capital Chronicle
The nation’s death rate may have fallen to a historic low last year as many of the killers of young people such as drug overdoses, gun homicides and traffic accidents continued receding in 2025, according to new federal statistics.
States have not shared equally in the success, though, according to a analysis of provisional data by state. And the low ebb may reflect the effects of past health care expansion efforts that are threatened by today’s Trump administration moves to curtail Medicaid expansion and cut funding for rural hospitals.
Indiana’s death rate over the last decade remained virtually the same over the ten-ear period from 2015-2025. In 2015 the death rate for Hoosiers was 833.9 per 100,000; in 2025 that inched to 836.7 deaths per 100,000.
It was noted that the state rate for death by respiratory disease is 1.5 times higher than the national rate.
Our neighbors to the south in Kentucky had 924.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2015 which nudged up to 932.3 in 2025.The Bluegrass state has a death by heart attack rate that is 2.2 times higher than the national rate.
Some states in the Northeast have seen death rates drop by the most between 2015 and 2025 — led by New Jersey (down 8.3%), Rhode Island (down 8%), New York (down 7.9%), Massachusetts (down 7.4%) and the District of Columbia (down 7.0%). Some experts credit states’ attention to health care, traffic issues and gun violence.
New Jersey has taken the lead in decreases because of a long-term commitment to expanding health care to people with low incomes, said Stephen Crystal, director of Rutgers University’s Center for Health Services Research.
Even before Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act, New Jersey and Massachusetts, among other states, were pooling funds with hospitals to cover more low-income residents, Crystal said.
There’s also a more confrontational attitude toward speeding and less tolerance for guns in the Northeast, he said.
“Here’s something that annoys a lot of New Jerseyans. The state troopers have the cojones to pull you over if you’re doing 90 on the turnpike. This is not the case in Wyoming,” Crystal said. “Also if you go out West where gun possession is very high, then the firearm suicide deaths become enormous.”
New Mexico had an age-adjusted death rate 9% higher last year than 10 years ago, as drug overdose deaths continue to plague the state at more than twice the national rate.
New Mexico also struggles with higher death rates from alcoholic liver disease and gun homicide. Neighboring Arizona, where the death rate is 5% higher than 10 years ago, also stands out for a high overdose death rate and a high gun suicide rate.
It’s hard to be sure how much death rates really changed between 2024 and 2025 because the methodology changed, Crystal noted, accusing the CDC of “grabbing for a good news headline” by reporting the apparently historic decrease prominently in a blog item.
For 2025, the CDC used different methods to calculate rates, including more adjustments to 2020 census data used as a basis for age adjustment, noting in the report that the results could change and “should be interpreted with caution.”
Asked about the issue, the CDC said in a statement that “as this is a provisional report, we did not go in depth about the change in population denominators” and that it is “planning a brief report that will show the impact” of the changes on death rates and birth rate in new statistics.
In any case, the Trump administration likely can’t claim credit for current decreases in death rates, which would reflect policy changes from years ago that slowly take effect, Crystal said.
“This is not the time to see the effect of what Trump is doing now. It’s going to take five years,” Crystal said.
“As a country we are improving. We should celebrate that. But many segments of the population are left behind,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.
Mokdad credited some medical advances for decreases in heart disease that came in spite of increased obesity.
“That decline in cardiovascular disease was due to better controlled blood pressure,” Mokdad said. “Blood pressure medication, when it came out, was very expensive. Now blood pressure medication is so cheap you can get a three-month supply for less than the price of a cup of coffee.”
