How to Escape a Death Spiral
“Death spiral!” President Trump tweeted in May, about the Affordable Care Act. It had been a common accusation of Republicans even earlier. Media, pundits, and think tanks all weighed in on whether or not the label applies to Obamacare and its health-care exchanges.
Today, death spiral means “a marketplace spinning out of control,” as FiveThirtyEight’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester puts it. It’s an accusation that demands an urgent response. In a death spiral, destruction is so near and so inevitable that any attempt to avoid it becomes valid. By evoking the dwindling seconds before a plane crash, every other option looks better by comparison.
Yet death spirals have another story to tell. Before the death spiral was a figure of speech, it was a physical problem aviators needed to solve: how to keep from crashing when they flew through clouds or fog. How they solved real death spirals in the air might help explain how to resist the narrowed choices metaphorical death spirals impose.
