The Senate tax bill will kill about 15,000 people every year

Appearing on CNBC Monday, Harvard economist and former Obama and Clinton administration official Larry Summers warned that if the Senate tax bill becomes law, about 10,000 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived. If anything, his estimate isn’t pessimistic enough.

The reason why is that the bill repeals the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, an unpopular but necessary provision that stabilizes insurance markets and wards off something known as an...