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US Life Expectancy May Have Peaked
Hugh Pickens writes "Live Science reports that although life expectancy in the United States has risen to an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007 up from 77.7 in 2006, gains in life expectancy may be pretty much over, as some groups — particularly people in rural locations are already stagnating or slipping in contrast to all other industrialized nations. Hardest hit are regions in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, in Appalachia and also the southern part of the Midwest reaching into Texas. The culprits — largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services — are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity. What the new analysis reveals is the reality of two Americas, one on par with most of Europe and parts of Asia, and another no different than a third-world nation with the United States placing 41st on the 2008 CIA World Factbook list, behind Bosnia but still edging out Albania. 'Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through 1999 those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and some became even worse off,' says a report published in PLoS Medicine by a team led by Harvard's Majid Ezzati, adding that 'study results are troubling because an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement of the health of "all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities.'"
[citation needed]
The "US health system" has a stated aim? I thought the aim was to maximize the profits of the insurance companies, which we know can only be done by denying health care to those at greater risk. Where, exactly, is this stated?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Just wait until government Death Panels start pulling the plug on Grandmas!
What?
You need to calm down before you give yourself a heart attack and drag the average down even more.
There is not really much wrong with your analysis, but you should be aware that it is not just people who think differently to you who are arguing from a political perspective. The real question (and it is a question that I can't answer satisfactorily to myself) is what happens to the children of these "nitwits"? The fact is that if a kid is brought up in a household where the adults are not able to look after themselves properly, are the kids more likely to grow up like the adults in their lives? That's the difficulty; you and I and lots of other people are brought up right, we get education as to what is healthy and what is not. But these kids (ie the children of the nitwits) don't get that opportunity. We can dismiss the parents for being nitwits (but remember they may also have been brought up in an unhealthy household) but can we so easily dismiss the children? I grew up in an old-fashioned liberal family. As I have grown older, my views have shifted and I take a slightly more conservative stance. But I cannot (and I hope I never will) dismiss the children of inadequate parents. Doing that is a step too far, in my opinion.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Here is a comparison of life expectancies between the US and Europe.
For unadjusted life expectancy, the U.S. ranks #14 out of 16 countries, but for the adjusted standardized life expectancy, (adjusted for the effects of premature death resulting from non-health-related fatal injuries) the U.S. ranks #1.
The problem with the system in America is that it is designed to kick people when they are already down and then hold them there. People of all races and upbringings make mistakes. The American system is much more unforgiving to those who get caught making mistakes.
This, for example, and ridiculous bank overdraft fee policies among others.
-- Ethanol-fueled
So peripheral nervous system problems are OK; but central nervous system problems aren't.
Got it.
Ya know, that was my biggest problems with Sicko. Moore is throwing out all the numbers about spending per capita, highest incidences of diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, etc., and blames it on the health care system but misses an obvious cause of all of this; obesity. Obesity causes more health problems, and as a result more spending. But of course, Moore wouldn't say that, because now instead of blaming the big, bad corporations and government, he would be asking his viewers to take some personal responsibility (which seems to be a progressive idea). Our country isn't sick because of health care, it's sick because we're fat.
The demand for healthier options in low-income areas is low because healthier options are too expensive for them to afford. The highly processed nutrition-poor food is FAR cheaper than the whole-grain fresh-vegetable healthy stuff.
Ya know, i'd agree with a lot of your post, but to say the higher death rates are due to guns and lack of health care, that's idiotic. What about our obesity problem, which is causes by diet and lack of exercise (in most cases)? If people took care of their body then they wouldn't need to see the doctor's all the damn time. Would universal health care be nice, sure. But how about we take some personal responsibility and take care of ourselves (oh wait, progressives like placing the blame somewhere else). We don't do that, health care costs will keep increasing due to heart attack, diabetes, etc.
I would fully reply to your trolling but I just don't have the energy to do it right now.
Life expectancy and infant mortality are used quite often to compare the relative health of different countries. I will quote from the article.
You are bitching that this post is right from the Democratic party talking points. I would ask you, how is it that we pay more for health care "per capita" (that means per person, since you trolls often fail to understand things) yet have a lower life expectancy that fucking CUBA?
It seems to me that when your health care system is that inefficient, the common sense thing to do is fix it. Yet the idea to try and fix an obviously broken health care system is denounced as DNC talking points.
There are poor and disadvantaged in every country, and people in every country in the world make bad decisions, like substance abuse or an XBOX?!? (I didn't know the XBOX played a major role in our health care woes, but whatever.)
The point is that every country has its disadvantaged, yet America's disadvantaged are further disadvantaged by bad health care. And everyone in America pays higher prices per person for health care. Even those perfect people like you who don't make bad decisions.
This IS news for nerds, and it is a valid science article about health. It is a serious problem, and trolling it won't make your Republican talking points any more true.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Meaning, there are fewer grocers or supermarkets, and those stores that do exist stock more highly processed and unhealthy foods. Kinda tough to follow food guidelines when you can't even buy the elements of a healthy diet.
You know, I've been to some nice fancy grocers that specialize in all organic foods and such, and I've also been to a lot of run down supermarkets in bad neighborhoods. While the ratio of healthy to unhealthy food is certainly different in each case, I've NEVER seen a since store that didn't have healthy items. Pretty much everywhere has a produce section. Pretty much everywhere sells oatmeal, or cereal (health stuff like bran flakes - not Golden Crisps or the other mostly sugar cereals). Everywhere sells bread and cold cut meat.
Don't get me wrong I know it's harder to buy stuff like fresh fish or other seafood from a crappy rundown store, but again, that's market forces, and it's not the ONLY option if you're looking to eat healthier.
I actually grew up in one of those southern areas of the country, and it's quite obvious why it's having an effect. We deep fry everything down here. Most families are now deep frying their Thanksgiving turkey for heavens sake. When I grew up my grandmother fixed fried bread, and "butts meat" (which is more or less salted and fried fat). Despite my protestations, even when cooking a vegetable such as cabbage, or potatoes, or the like, my parents would throw a ham-hock or a slab of bacon or something in the pot with them. To them you simply COULDN'T cook vegetables without throwing fatty meat in the pot with them. Salt? Don't get me started. They eat salt on EVERYTHING, and not in small quantities. A small side salad will get a teaspoon or two of salt added. All fruit (when they eat fruit) had salt sprinkled on it before eating it. I've even got a few family members that will pour salt into a BEER before drinking it.
Result: I've had 2 uncles who had heart attacks in their 30's. On my mom's side neither grandparent lived past 55. My dad and every one of his 4 brothers has high blood pressure, and 2 have diabetes. It's not because there weren't healthy options in the stores, it's because they refuse(d) to buy and eat them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
One thing I learned about the US that is hard to grasp for someone from say Holland is that there are areas in the US where you just can't buy produce. No vegetables.
Sure, you can DRIVE to another area, but that costs money.
Now I can't say exactly how true this is, but the simple fact is that even in "poor" areas in holland you can easily WALK (in less then 5 minutes) to a supermarket. Often one of a regular big chain like the AH. Which carries in all its stores, fresh vegetables.
They are still relatively expensive however.
If you do the math, then cheap fast food (the cheapest no-brand frozen pizza's) can be a LOT cheaper then even buying healthy base products and making your own. Good luck making a meal for 99 euro cents (cost of a frozen pizza). That of course assumes that such fresh products are even available, which in america they apparently aren't always.
You do get fat from eating to much, but you also get fat from eating the wrong things. Eat only frozen meals and your waist line will expand.
What europeans forget is the sheer scale of america. Everything is really bigger over there and this includes the slums. What might a be a bad neighbourhood in holland, consisting of maybe a few streets, is an entire suburb housing the same number of people as major town in holland.
Amsterdam, the dutch capitol has 750.000 people and is surrounded by farm land. It would fit several times into a large american city. In fact, the entire country is less then a 1/3rd of the state of new york.
Being poor can make it very hard to eat right especially if you are in a poor area where there just ain't a market for expensive healthy food.
Compare the prices, cheapo no-brand coke vs apple juice (and I am not even talking about the stuff with no sugars or artificial flavors added).
Frozen poptarts vs fresh bread (and wonder bread does not count as bread, it is a building material).
Remember, it is not the expensive fast foods that make people fat (well they do) but the stuff we are talking about here is the no-brand really crappy cheapo kind that is decades away from cutting down on articficial flavors and saturated fats.
When I buy fries, mine are made from real potatoes, cut on the spot, properly fried in expensive fluid fat that is replaced often. When you do it on a budget, you have cheapo thin fries (more fat) that are fried in your own cooker with months old solid fat.
Poor people eat unhealthy because healthy food is really expensive. live on a budget for your whole life to find out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The combined experience of the Nordic countries for half a century now should stand as proof that, even if everything in life is provided for you, the vast, vast majority of people still go out and work for a living.
That's great, if you're positioned to receive that best care or you subscribe to the lotto mentality that so many Americans do. Otherwise, it's beside the fucking point. Why should most people give a shit if a country has the best stuff, if they have no realistic chance of ever getting to use it?
And the relevance of that is? The most amazing care in the world is of no consequence if you can't afford it. I can't see how a system optimized for the super-rich can be considered the best for a society as a whole. A better measure would be where someone on an average income would be best served, or someone with no income.
Let me get this straight- in the US, our lowest classes are so well fed, with so many calories, that they become overweight.
I know! It's like people who somehow dehydrate on a boat, even though they're *surrounded by water*! Because, as we both know, just like food, it doesn't matter what's in it or where it came from, it's all equally good for you, right?
Let's see: Just shy of 72 years ago, my grandfather arrived in this country with $32 and unable to speak the language. He lived in a ghetto style apartment with a brother who had come over to America from Europe 18 months earlier. He spent a week learning enough English to get a job in a machine shop for about $1 an hour.
In short, he was just about as low as you can go on the totem pole in America.
40 years later, he died, living in a house he had built and paid for, on 40 acres of land overlooking a river. He had married and had a daughter (my mom). He left a small, but not unsubstantial amount of money behind.
My parents were lower-middle-class, but my dad managed to start his own tool and die business, (he was also the son of pennyless immigrants who came from Germany in 1919) and lived a comfortable, if not extravagant lifestyle.
I was able to go to college, working to pay for most of it, and get a degree in Computer Science, my brother has a degree in Chemistry and Math. We have both made good livings, and live on the high-end of middle class, bordering on upper class.
My parents weren't given anything. They didn't grow up in a mansion. Their parents literally had *NOTHING* on coming to America. Nothing was given to them either. They lived through the Great Depression and World War II. About the only break my parents ever had was that my dad *wasn't* drafted to go to Vietnam.
I've been saving money, I've bought used cars, I've paid off bills, and by the time I retire, I'll have enough money socked away that, were I to choose to do it, I could reasonably provide for my children for the rest of their lives.
I did all of that *WITHOUT THE CHARITY OF OTHERS*. All I had to do was make good choices and work at what was important. No, my parents weren't drug addicts (surprising, being teens in the 60's), but they worked their way up from nothing. No one gave them a house or car or college education. They worked for everything they got. It takes one good decision to break the cycle, but you would rather claim that no one can make that decision, and that the "privileged few" are somehow so enlightened and empowered that they should make decisions for the poor. But you ignore the consequences.
Had my grandfather come to the United States and been told, "Nope, you can't work your way up on your own. Here's your free money, and free house, and free education from your government because you can't do it yourself," do you think he would have ever become more than a mooch off of society?
Although, given his personality, he would probably have spit in the face of someone who tried to do that. And that's the point. If you have a government who can come into a home and tear up a family for a "good" reason, then they can do it for a "bad" reason too. If they can give you health care, then they can take it away from you too. And government builds *nothing* - they produce no products - they only take from the people. Every penny spent by the government was first earned by someone else's work, and then stolen at gun point (because only a government can steal money out of your wallet and then throw *YOU* in jail if you resist) from the person who earned it.
That grandfather knew exactly what a government that hands out health care and registered guns "to cut crime" and who complained about people "earning too much money" was like, because he came from Germany in 1938. His family would lose everything the next year when all their money and land was seized because they were "too rich" and the money and resources were needed by the Third Reich. That's what a government that can give you anything can do -- they can take *everything* away from you.
I donate more money to charities each year than Obama and Al Gore put together (according to their released tax returns -- though, admittedly, that's not hard) because I know "there but for the grace of God go I," but I do it *voluntarily*. The same way you should if you feel pity for those people.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Change insurer for non-medical reasons (premium, employer change, so on)? Welcome to waitlist hell, and scrutinization for pre-existing conditions, even though the populace's preponderance for a given condition didn't change as a result of your enrollment.
It's a bastardized, one sided situation, and where health insurance is your ONLY realistic option, because collusion and collaboration between insurance providers has ensured that most healthcare rates are jacked up way out of the realm of ordinary affordability, it's very delineating, you either have, or you have not.
Pop Quiz: Do you really think your overnight stay in emergency had an actual cost of $12,000? Do you wonder why the same chiro treatment costs $50 without insurance, but they bill the insurance provider $165 for it? Do you think that the insurance carrier is covering that $115 out of the grace of their heart, or because they employ such amazingly stellar investment gurus that they can do so on the return from the dividend from your premiums?
Where's that bridge and that "for sale" sign?
Do check out the blogspot post, but then check this out:
According to "OECD Economic Surveys: United States 2008", p. 137 (http://tinyurl.com/mt3g76):
"It has been claimed (Ohsfeld and Schneider, 2006) that adjusting for the higher death rate from accident or injury in the United States over 1980-99 than the OECD average would increase US life expectancy at birth from 18th of of 29 OECD countries to the highest. In fact, what the panel regression estimated by these authors shows is that predicted life expectancy at birth based on US GDP per capita and OECD average death rates from these causes is the highest in the OECD. The adjustment for the gap in injury death rates between the United States and OECD average alone only increases life expectancy at birth marginally, from 19th on average among 29 countries over 1980-99 to 17th. Hence, the high ranking of adjusted life expectancy mainly reflects high US GDP per capita, not the effects of unusually high death rates from accident and injury."
In other words, the figures in Table 1-5 are not U.S. life expectancies adjusted for fatal injuries, but rather a model that assumes that both the relationship of life expectancy to per capita GDP and injuries in the U.S. follow OECD trends.
That is - they are falsely giving the U.S. credit for having the same basic life expectancy as other other high GDP OECD countries, when in fact it is markedly lower.
Check it out for yourself, the Ohsfeld and Schneider report is at:
http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844742403.pdf
See p. 20-21.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I did all of that *WITHOUT THE CHARITY OF OTHERS*. All I had to do was make good choices and work at what was important.
What do you consider charity? Roads, sewer, power, education, fire and police protection, the security of an army?
For every person you show that has pulled themselves up by their bootstraps by making all the right decision, I can show you a person that also made all the right decisions and still got cancer or got plowed into by a drunk driver... and that's it. One unfortunate incident and your life changes dramatically for the worse.
I won't deny your hard work in getting to your position now - in fact, I congratulate you for it. But get off your high horse and admit that your success is likely equal parts hard work and luck with a little state-sponsored encouragement thrown in.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
What the fuck, even in the United Kingdom with the NHS for over 60 years now, there is a thriving private insurance industry, with private hospitals. Some employers even over private health insurance, and some people take it out privately.
This is clearly uninformed nonsense, along the lines of claiming that Stephen Hawkings would be dead under the NHS, when he is in fact British and gets excellent treatment without which he would be dead under the NHS.
The thing is that life expectancy is closely tied to your socioeconomic group. The top group in the USA has worse life expectancy and health outcomes than the lowest group in the UK, despite expenditure on health care in the USA being twice the percentage of GDP that it is in the UK.
I don't for one minute claim our health care system is perfect, but it is *FAR* less broken than the one in the USA.
Well, obviously. No system in the world can offer every possible treatment to anyone who might want it - to do so would take unlimited resources, which nobody has. And that includes the USA - it's just your insurance company that makes the choice (or if you're rich you can pay for yourself, but you can do that here too).
The major difference is that it's essentialy impossible for UK citizens to be uninsured - so no refusal of cover for "pre existing conditions", no trying to wriggle out of payment for treatment and no bankruptcy due to medical bills.
However, I think the most telling information about the NHS is that private insurance *is* available in the UK, but few people bother with it (under 10%, and mostly through employers).
Because you should be able to buy fire insurance after your house burns down.
Do you have the slightest clue how insurance works?
Here's what would happen if fire insurance were like health insurance.
Under this system fire insurance is provided by your employer, who gets a group discount from the insurance companies. Neither your employer nor the insurance company is allowed to disclose how much the insurance costs, because they both consider it a trade secret. Once a year, in November, you get the chance to change your fire insurance company if you are unhappy with them. But since you probably haven't had a fire, what is there to be unhappy about?
If you lose your job, you lose your fire insurance but the insurance company is required by law to allow you to pay an exorbitant sum to continue your insurance for 6 months. They will also allow you to buy a cheaper plan, which will replace your house with a tent if it burns down. By the way, the most common way to lose your job is to have a house fire.
If you are self employed or unemployed, you might be able to buy insurance. It will be much more expensive than the group plans that employers get. You will also be disqualified if you have had a fire in the past, smoke, or have been seen with matches or a cigarette lighter.
The way the fire insurance system works is that your insurance company will provide you a list of twenty fire inspectors. You are required to have a fire inspector in order to get access to a fire station. You will call all twenty and their secretaries will tell you that they aren't taking any new clients. You will eventually get taken on by one of them because your mother is one of his clients.
The inspector is paid a flat fee per year per client by the insurance company. He gets paid this amount whether he inspects your home or not. Each time he does inspect your home he might get a small payment from the insurance company, but you need to give him a $20 additional payment. This is to encourage you not to get your home inspected. If your home has apparent problems that need further investigation, the inspector does not get additional payments from the insurance company. If your home needs repairs to prevent a fire, the insurance company will pay for them, but the inspector might get charged a fee for referring you to a contractor. This is to encourage your fire inspector not to refer you to a contractor to perform repairs.
The fire inspector contracts with a fire station to handle emergencies. It might not be the closest fire station to your home. None of the firefighters working at the fire station are employees of the fire station. They are all independent contractors who are paid by the person who has a fire, or by the insurance company. The only employees at the fire station are the 35 people they have on staff to handle billing the 65 insurance companies that they contract with.
If you have a fire, the first thing you do is call your fire inspector. If he agrees that there is a fire, he will call the insurance company to get authorization to call the fire station. Some fraction of the time these authorizations will be denied.
When the fire station gets the call they will also call the insurance company for authorization. When each fireman gets to the house, they will ask for a copy of your insurance card before putting out the fire. If any of the people involved forgets to get authorization, they won't be paid by the insurance company. They will either bill you, or eat the expenses.
Fortunately it was just a minor fire entirely contained in a frying pan. After the fire has been put out, and a contractor has started repairs, you will receive a bunch of bills that have "THIS IS NOT A BILL" written on them. You will get one from each fireman, one from the fire station, one from your fire inspector, one from the contractor who is repairing your house and one from each of the construction workers the contractor has hired. They will come wit
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