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US Life Expectancy Falls Further (cnn.com)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday released data that shows life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), pushed down by the sharpest annual increase in suicide in nearly a decade and a continued rise in deaths from opioid drugs. "Influenza, pneumonia and diabetes also factored into last year's increase," The Wall Street Journal adds. From the report: Economists and public-health experts consider life expectancy to be an important measure of a nation's prosperity. The 2017 data paint a dark picture of health and well-being in the U.S., reflecting the effects of addiction and despair, particularly among young and middle-aged adults, as well as diseases plaguing an aging population and people with lower access to health care. The U.S. has lost three-tenths of a year in life expectancy since 2014, a stunning reversal for a developed nation, and lags far behind other wealthy nations. Life expectancy is 84.1 years in Japan and 83.7 years in Switzerland, first and second in the most-recent ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. ranks 29th.
White men and women fared the worst, along with black men, all of whom experienced increases in death rates. Death rates rose in particular for adults ages 25 to 44, and suicide rates are highest among people in the nation's most rural areas. On the other hand, deaths declined for black and Hispanic women, and remained the same for Hispanic men. As drug and suicide mortality has risen, deaths from heart disease, the nation's leading killer, went down only slightly, failing to offset the increases in mortality from other causes and prolonging another worrisome trend.
White men and women fared the worst, along with black men, all of whom experienced increases in death rates. Death rates rose in particular for adults ages 25 to 44, and suicide rates are highest among people in the nation's most rural areas. On the other hand, deaths declined for black and Hispanic women, and remained the same for Hispanic men. As drug and suicide mortality has risen, deaths from heart disease, the nation's leading killer, went down only slightly, failing to offset the increases in mortality from other causes and prolonging another worrisome trend.
It is more like a religious backwater country. Yes there are patches of developed, say California or NewYork but the rest..
Dont forget about the food pyramid, processed foods, and high sugar drinks. Politics and lobbyists had a huge hand in all of this too.
Preventative healthcare is the key to a long life. Stopping stuff early keeps it from killing you suddenly or having permanent effects. People with poor healthcare (or limited access because of cost) tend to skimp on preventative healthcare, with corresponding effects on life expectancy. Why does the country with the most expensive healthcare on earth have the worst healthcare in the G20? Because dying patients are good for business.
[US] life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years
One tenth of a year was the difference between USA and the 50 years embargoed Cuba in WHO 2015 study.
There's lots of cancer cures now, cancer is no longer the absolute death sentence it once was. Heart disease? Just ask Dick Cheney if they can fix it.... yeh they can. You blamed immigrants bringing "untreatable contagious conditions". What disease exactly? "heart disease"?? "Suicide"?
Lots of cures for lots of diseases, but healthcare has been de-funded, and large parts of Obamacare have been undermined, and you cannot afford it because you are old and have existing preconditions.
Lots of cures for lots of diseases, BUT NOT FOR YOU.
Of the two countries with the longest lifespans:
Switzerland has compulsary healthcare insurance, aka Obamacare.
Japan has 70%/30 state/compulsary private insurance.
It's not immigrants that bring the problem, the Republican party is home grown. Fox News is a *domestic* propaganda outfit. I's not immigrants that defunds Obamacare.
According to the article I read, the main cause of the drop is an increase in suicide and drug overdoses among the young. Which means fewer people pumping money into the system, without much corresponding drop in the people drawing out of the system. So I'd expect the opposite results...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The difference in suicide rate from AC's link is 12 per 100,000. (18 vs 6)
The overall death rate is 885 vs 632, a difference of 253 per 100k.
So suicide rates, while high, only explain 5% of the white-hispanic male difference.
Legalizing isn't washing your hands of it, it's merely the start of being able to truly help.
Keeping such drugs illegal is washing our hands and then using our clean hands to dig a large hole into which we place our heads so we cannot hear the screams of the damned.
If we tried what Portugal did 14 years ago, maybe we'd have similar success...
Don't forget we could still go after dealers of really dangerous stuff, it would juts make small quantities illegal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sugar ín everything and drinking a litre of sugar water every day helps too.
-- Cheers!
USA numbers are bad because of the underclass of uninsured and un cared for people.
But slash dot readers are middle class (despite their wingeing). and I think you will find that middle class Americans do just fine.
Just don't ever get poor.
Long working hours, stress due to stupid societal expectations, bullying via social media, poor health care unless you have a cush job
Well it's lucky that #1 Japan doesn't have a problem with any of these.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
And that's happened as opiate prescriptions have plummeted.
Overprescribing was addressed in the worst possible way. Forcing people off their prescriptions of a standardized product led to seeking black market alternatives. This is yet another example of how prohibition takes something dangerous and makes it massively more so, since we keep falling for the same old idea that people won't take/can't get drugs if you simply ban them.
Make no mistake, this massive spike in ODs wasn't some unforeseen surprise, everyone familiar with opiate abuse predicted this. The policy makers were no doubt informed of this, and then actively chose massively increasing overdose deaths over people continuing to use a less fatal alternative under some medical supervision. Not only that, our new crisis of severely undertreated pain has come roaring back, and legitimate pain patients are ODing and killing themselves too. Another totally foreseen consequence. Once again, the government looked at a drug problem and said 'Lots of people are dying, how can we make even more people suffer and die?'. It's sadomoralism, they desire only to punish drug users (not just abusers), not to actually reduce the harm drugs cause.
No matter how good your doctor is, if you cannot afford him he could be offering eternal life and you'll still croak from a preventable disease because you just can't afford it.
And with more and more people not being able to... well, what do you expect?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One factor IS different. Japan has near-free public healthcare. As should be obvious, this difference is likely the main driver.
See if the number of infant mortality was increasing that would explain it, but they have stayed stable or lower slightly. Therefore while this can explain an *offset* between USA and other OECD country, it cannot explain the trend. Furthermore even as an offset, it is incredibly low and cannot account for such a huge discrepancy : infant mortality even with those "lowered" rates are 3 per live birth in Germany and 6 per live birth in USA. That cannot account for the discrepancy in average life expectancy difference : 1.7 years that would require far more than 3 more baby per live birth to drop an average of 1.7 years over 300 million people (hint : 3 more death of baby per 1000, so about 12000 baby death per year, so per cohort at most I come with a gap of about between 1 and 2 month of contribution. That still leaves you 18 month to explain and baby death will not do that).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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