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Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

economist.com

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Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#61

Post by akhatri_aus »

notadoc wrote: post #8

Lingering effects of the great recession. There is a very strong and well studied relationship between unemployment, economic stress, and drug abuse. These are people who are depressed (clinically, economically, or often both), and they are self medicating. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/joblessne... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3935688/ Unfortunately the media-driven obsession wit…

During the Great Depression though, life expectancy rose - especially during the dust bowl.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#62

Post by decebalus1 »

matte_black wrote: post #9

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lumping them in with every drug addict.

> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”?

Wow.. whenever someone asks me why the US doesn't have humane social services and still regards drug addiction as a crime in need of punishment, I'll point them to this comment.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#63

Post by itronitron »

matte_black wrote: post #9

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lumping them in with every drug addict.

people most similar to you likely includes many drug addicts

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#64

Post by sumedh »

biohax2015 wrote: post #33

It’s very frustrating to watch America decline and not being able to do anything about it. Has democracy failed? Is it time for a rekindling of the study of comparative politics? It seems the Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace.

> Has democracy failed?

An outsider was elected even though he was running against establishment candidates with huge money backing them.

I say democracy won.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#65

Post by majormajor »

make3 wrote: post #57
majormajor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it. This is a dicey one. One of the things that drives treatment costs up is more advanced technology. Should we go back to 70s/80s-era cancer treatments, HIV treatments, surgical outcomes? We need a lot more national discussion about where the real opportunities to save money are, and what sh…

there is no legitimate reason the us should be praying at least an order of magnitude more for the same treatments

I certainly don't like the US having higher prices than elsewhere in the world, but what I would like to see more discussion of there is "where does the funding for the development of the treatments come from" rather than just comparison of absolute cost. I suspect we're subsidizing (especially at the top of the market) a lot of research that the rest of the world is also benefiting from. This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, but I would like to see the numbers and, if it is the case, find out why the burden isn't shared more equally?

I worry, a bit, that this is an area where other wealthy countries act in somewhat bad faith through their health services, to keep their own costs down while knowing that a corporation will make the deal since it's still greater total income and profit than not selling for full cost overseas.

I fear a race to the bottom where new treatments are impractical to pursue much more than I fear a stratified market where new treatments are only available to the rich at first. Look at how totally we've managed to fuck up the incentives for academic research -- I want to tread lightly, in these areas.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#66

Post by majormajor »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #59
majormajor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. Is college too expensive or is it over-required, or both? Even if it was free, that's a pretty substantial 4 year opportunity cost. The other part, a drop in international students is something different, though. To conclude how damaging that is, we'd need to know how much of the cohort that dropped off would've otherwise stay…

> We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. This comes from misalignment of specialization. We have too many English majors and not enough physicians and engineers, and the English majors can't all find skilled employment. That allows the unskilled employers to require a college degree, because the unemployed English majors will take an unskilled job over nothing, so…

We could shift the low-demand graduates to high-demand graduates with somewhat decreased cost, in theory, by simply axing two thirds of the low-demand programs, no?

But here's where I run into a problem with this theory: why haven't we already, then? If the demand is that imbalanced, why aren't more companies desperate for labor to the point of training workers themselves despite mismatched (or no!) degrees, or why isn't the big pool of under-employeed workers finding massive benefit to individual re-training that should pay off in spades? Even in the most immediately obvious areas, software, a lot of bootcamps have mixed or dubious outcomes, yet in theory it should be easy to do extremely well with that.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#67

Post by sandworm101 »

ddxxdd wrote: post #53
majormajor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say less the recession and more just a particularly-hard-hitting-in-America trend away from the country's historical industrial base. The 20th century US benefited massively from being on the front lines of modern industrialization and mass production, creating a ton of jobs especially in certain regions. And in areas that haven't been able to replace those jobs as the US economy becomes based in different areas…

I'll be more inclined to listen to diatribes about the inevitability of America's economic decline when we no longer have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Until then, I firmly place the blame of America's economic woes on one political party. Hint: it's the party of higher taxes.

Wow. Corporate taxes cause drug addiction? Is there any evil that cannot be solved through lower taxes?

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#68

Post by matte_black »

decebalus1 wrote: post #62
matte_black wrote: post #9

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lumping them in with every drug addict.

> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Wow.. whenever someone asks me why the US doesn't have humane social services and still regards drug addiction as a crime in need of punishment, I'll point them to this comment.

I don't get why this is a big deal.

We already serve up content based on people similar to you or making similar choices as you, why not health forecasts?

If I eat healthy, exercise, get the proper amount of sleep and am not addicted to drugs, why not show me how other people with similar habits as me are doing, instead of averaging in people who treat their body like a dumpster?

Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. There is nothing I can do that will make any impact on that number. By this logic we should show life expectancy as the average of the entire planet, that would be the best wouldn't it? No.

Showing people an accurate life expectancy however, could motivate them to make changes to their lifestyle or stay the course if they are happy with it.

I don't know, maybe people just have negative knee-jerk reactions to anyone proposing individualist sentiments.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#69

Post by biohax2015 »

thatcat wrote: post #47
biohax2015 wrote: post #33

It’s very frustrating to watch America decline and not being able to do anything about it. Has democracy failed? Is it time for a rekindling of the study of comparative politics? It seems the Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace.

>Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace. How so?

Professional politicians who know what the people need better than the people themselves.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#70

Post by geomark »

majormajor wrote: post #55
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If nothing is done, the number of Americans with health insurance is expected to decline by millions this year (due to the repeal of the health care tax (I forget the term they used) in the new tax law). This is a bad metric. We should be worried about healthcare costs, not insurance coverage. You can have "universal coverage" and still be wrong, because people are paying $5000+/year in insurance premiums they can'…

> If it didn't cost a hundred thousand dollars to get sick then it wouldn't be a problem for people to not be insured against it. This is a dicey one. One of the things that drives treatment costs up is more advanced technology. Should we go back to 70s/80s-era cancer treatments, HIV treatments, surgical outcomes? We need a lot more national discussion about where the real opportunities to save money are, and what sh…

"One of the things that drives treatment costs up is more advanced technology."

It's not so much the technology as it is the setting in which the technology is deployed. Compare US costs to costs for the same procedures and technology in top medical tourism destinations. Quality of care and outcomes are much better at a fraction of US costs. It's the big morass of stuff around the US health care environment that adds big multiples to the cost of deploying new technology.

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