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US Death Rate Rises, Health Officials Aren't Sure Why (nbcnews.com)

New submitter Ungrounded Lightning writes: According to The New York Times, the U.S. death rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade (or several decades if particular). The rise is across the whole population, though whites, especially the less educated among them, were recently (and separately) documented to be particularly hard hit. The article speculates about drug abuse (prescription as well as illegal), suicides, and Alzheimer's, though it notes that heart disease -- which had been consistently dropping -- has also risen. No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect. The aging of the population was mentioned, though the rise is present even within particular age groups. The National Center for Health Statistics shows the adjusted death rate went up from 723 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 to nearly 730 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. We do know that the suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades.

9 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Libtards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "puppet socialist hellpits" What? You mean places like the USA? "SHOW YOUR PAPERS, CITIZEN!"

  2. Re:Recession is really a depression by Cyberax · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why is the parent modded as "insightful"? It's full of bullshit.

    For example, the price of beef has NOT tripled: http://www.statista.com/statis... - it went from $2.09 per pound in 2006 to $3.05 in 2015. That's annualized 3.2% price growth rate - quite in line with the official inflation.

    And if you don't believe BLS then there's an alternative: http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ - they collate prices from multiple sources (literally more than a billion price points a day) and compute their own inflation measurements. And it's in agreement with BLS.

    Anecdotes like "BLS changes stuff to hide the TRUTH" are totally and ALWAYS a complete bullshit. Always. No exceptions.

  3. Re: The suicide rate will only get worse. by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1, Informative

    Real sysadmins work as root

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  4. Re:Recession is really a depression by roman_mir · · Score: 1, Informative

    I am just going to link to some of the previous discussions, so that this one does not take place in the vacuum.

    On the Japanese destroying their currency and causing a massive economic downturn. In the same discussion on the idiotic idea that government devaluing currency is 'good for exports'. It's only 'good for exports' in the way that lowering your pay makes your work cheaper, why should government be the one providing discounts on your labour on your behalf?

    On the Fed causing more bubbles with inflation (money printing) to make it look like the economy is doing OK, when in reality all they are doing is eventually raising everybody's prices by destroying the value of currency.

    On the so called 'main street economists', who are nothing more but mouth pieces for politicians who want to 'provide easy solutions' through impossible promises and thus eventually through inflation (money printing).

    On population size, cartels and nonsensical ideas of central planning of those.

    On robotics in the labour market, relative value of labour via capital investment and the role of government in destroying jobs by making labour too expensive to hire.

    On SS and other ponzi scams ran by governments and on reasons for deflation being a desired situation compared to inflation. Those who think people will stop buying stuff they need today just because next year it may cost a couple of percent less are blind to the point that they don't see that people prefer to get into debt today (credit card debt as an example, annualized 20% debt) to buy what they want/need right now, so they are willing to pay this premium today just not to wait for tomorrow, so those arguments are nonsensical on their face.

    On IRS and the Fed

    On jobs going to India.

    On the connection between government devaluing money of a nation and recessions/depressions.

    On China being more free economically speaking than the USA and much of the rest of the world.

    On Bitcoins.

    On the coming US bonds and dollar crash.

    On why it is dangerous to provide jobs in the USA.

    On raising suicide levels in Japan due to economic problems.

    On government being a consumption item and why it is bad to borrow for consumption.

    On 'going cashless'.

    On junk US bonds.

    On 'trickle down' economics.

    'Healthy people' in an 'unhealthy market'.

  5. Re: Recession is really a depression by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's price normalized by cattle weight, so the final consumer price is higher (because not all parts of cows are edible). However, beef is still pretty cheap especially since most of the meat is ground beef: http://data.beefretail.org/who...

  6. Re: Recession is really a depression by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Informative

    4 years ago I could buy a lbs of beef for $1.99, it's around $5.99-7.30lbs these days. Top that out with 94m people not in the labor force, you've got a recipe for people popping themselves off. Past trends show that as well regardless of what the government says the unemployment rate is, especially unemployment rates where you simply fall off after several years.

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  7. Re: Libtards by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    The thing about making absolute statements is that it only takes a single counter-example to absolutely disprove them. So here you go.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    But it's not Andalusia of today that is interesting, it's Andalusia as it existed between 1920 and 1939. Andalusia the land of plenty while the rest of the world were living in the great depression. Absolutely socialist and completely anarchist - had no government whatsoever (let alone a totalitarian one). Orwell fought on their side in the Spanish civil war - he called Andalusia the closest thing to a Utopian society that has ever existed. A society that had no poverty, starvation or suffering at all - and more personal liberty than any other in history before or since.

    That pissed off everybody else - nobody liked to see people governing themselves, without poverty or hunger, in a functioning industrial society. Other country's citizens may get ideas... so they faced a two-front war. Capitalist and communists (they may despise each other but not nearly as much as they despised anarcho-soialists. The Capitalists hated both the anarchism and the socialism and the communists REALLY hated the idea of a working socialism without an autocratic state) actually formed an alliance to wipe Andalusia off the map and after almost 2 decades they finally overwhelmed them.
    But economically, politically and socially it was an astoundingly successful society. Democracy's greatest success. Unfortunately nobody can stand forever against a sustained war on two fronts by extremely powerful forces, even so it took two decades to defeat them.

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  8. Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? by CaptainLard · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obamacare hasn't helped anyone. The "millions of poor people" who supposedly benefited from it qualified for medicaid to begin with.

    Doesn't mean they got it. One of the big things Obamacare did was expand medicaid so those people that qualified actually received healthcare. Everyone's beef was using the individual mandate to make it happen (ask congress for $100B to give more poor people insurance? yeah that would have worked out so much better). Sure it needs some work but its not like everything was roses under the status quo. I assume you're firmly dug in to your opinion on it but if you look at some of the data that is rolling in, Obamacare has largely done what it set out to do, which is get more people health insurance (+30M so far). Plenty of anecdotes abound about financial ruin...just as there were before Obamacare but none of the disaster scenarios have come true or even seem plausible anymore.

    Also, I don't think any candidate would have had the experience to deal with a historically antagonistic congress like Obama did for 8 years. Hell, democrats even voted for Bush and cheney's war.

    Anyway, I don't expect you to give this post any credence but maybe lighten up a bit and don't deal so much in absolutes. Life is generally more complicated than goodthing/badthing.

  9. Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? by ScentCone · · Score: 2, Informative

    This. That's the key to the whole "Affordable" act scam. My wife and I were very happy with our previous plan at $2500 deductible. It just jumped to $12,000 and our rates have more than tripled, even as we've lost choices of doctors and hospitals. This was all utterly predictable, and WAS predicted by the people who opposed the bill. But Pelosi, Reid, and Obama deliberately and knowingly lied about it in order to get it passed, and now we're all wearing it. As a result, fewer people are getting basic health care. No surprise that there's more death across the board, including suicide by people who used to be able to afford care and now no longer can.

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