Most importantly, when we subtracted the number of lives represented by the two projections inspired by Sommers from the actual figures, we learned that if Tennessee had expanded Medicaid, between 1,863 and 4,599 black lives might have been saved from 2011 to 2015. That staggering number is actually conservative: the figures did not account for the many more African American citizens who grew sicker but did not actually die during the time frame.
