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Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

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Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#31

Post by JimTheMan »

narrator wrote: post #7

We spend double, as a percentage of GDP, what any other rich country spends on health care, so that's not it.

Your employer picks a plan for you, which isn't what you need.

You go to your doctor, who then tries to treat you. But then has to fight an insurance company who wants treatment that isn't in your best interests or isn't covered by the employer plan.

You get home and discover your Doctor is out of network. Pay up. You spend a million years fighting the insurance company.

OR your insurance is good, so the doctor says, what the hell I will order that test that is nice to have. They'll cover it. Costs increase.

Or you go to the emergency room, run up bills for the hospital and leave without paying. The taxpayer foots the bill.

And the doctors pay through the teeth for their degrees and want a big return. They earn more than other countries in a significant way.

All the incentives are out of whack and not in the public's interest.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#32

Post by Apocryphon »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #19
geogra4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its so geographically aligned like that. Plenty of rich areas in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix etc.

While that is true, I think that some of these things are tied to local culture too, which is why the Coastal distinction does have some merit. If you generally are in the Bay Area or LA you rarely see the level of obesity you see in say Houston despite the fact that both areas despite being rich have their fair share of the poor too. Similarly for smoking. It's exceedingly rare to see public smoking in the Bay Area.…

It's still regional rather than simply everyone vs. coastal. Not sure if it's fair to lump in the wealthier Rocky Mountain states like Colorado or Utah in with say the butter and cornfed Midwest.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#33

Post by majormajor »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #13
TuringNYC wrote: post #5

There really are two Americas - wealthy america and the rest of america. I'll bet if you split America into two sets of counties, the graph would be much different -- one would be a super-outlier and the other a super-laggard. I know this personally, as I've spent 21yrs of my life in one half, and another 20 in the other half. I've also lived overseas for several years, and they also have stratas, but much less prono…

Coastal America and rest of America might be a better way to cut it.

Not really, no. Many of the coastal cities are more stratified and economically segregated than many of the non-coastal ones, but they still have a sizable lower-class population. So the precarious people in the high-poverty areas are much more hidden from the "typical" view of someone with some money.

Food deserts and gang violence - both accelerated by concentrated poverty - are a couple of ways this manifests in some of the "elite" cities.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#35

Post by quicklime »

I also thought it was interesting to see when the US branched away from the rest of the rich countries. For example:

1. All the other rich countries have steadily increased health expenditure per capita, and for some reason this really accelerated in the US around the early '80s. But the money looks like it mostly went to things that didn't increase life expectancy. Maybe this was a Reagan thing?

2. The US had the highest cigarette sales until the mid '70s, but is now one of the lowest per capita. This is actually one of the things that the US has done better than its counterparts, e.g. Japan and Germany have higher cigarette sales per capita. However the death rate from smoking remains the highest, probably due to a combination of other factors such as poor healthcare.

3. Around the late '90s, the US really started to pull away from the rest of the rich countries in terms of death rate from opioid overdoses. Some of this spilled over into Canada, but they were able to keep it somewhat under control.

4. For deaths from both obesity and road accidents, the US just hasn't made the same sort of gains as the others since 1990.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#36

Post by sfkdjf9j3j »

admiralspoo wrote: post #10

Comparing ethnically homogenous countries to the US is meaningless and downright deliberately misleading at best. There is significant variation in every state by race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Is there any research that suggests such a dramatic effect as you're implying? It's obviously plausible that there is some genetic component to longevity but I have a hard time believing that isn't dwarfed by quality of healthcare and nutrition.

That said, it doesn't really invalidate what the article is talking about.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#37

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

_delirium wrote: post #23
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coastal America and rest of America might be a better way to cut it.

It's a bit more intermingled. For example, Williamson County, TN (Nashville suburbs) is one of the 10 highest-income counties in the entire country. The Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver suburbs are also very affluent. Wikipedia's collected some of the recent per-county census data here, although that isn't a perfect metric since states vary a lot in county size: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-incom…

Tennessee is a tax haven for the wealthy who don't want to be in Florida. These states have a more regressive economy because the un-wealthy have to shoulder more of the burden of financing their government.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#38

Post by free_rms »

JimTheMan wrote: post #31
narrator wrote: post #7

We spend double, as a percentage of GDP, what any other rich country spends on health care, so that's not it.

Your employer picks a plan for you, which isn't what you need. You go to your doctor, who then tries to treat you. But then has to fight an insurance company who wants treatment that isn't in your best interests or isn't covered by the employer plan. You get home and discover your Doctor is out of network. Pay up. You spend a million years fighting the insurance company. OR your insurance is good, so the doctor says,…

Not to mention squads of clerks at every single doctor's office doing battle with entire armies at the insurers in a many-to-many clusterfuck of epic proportions over every single bit of care delivered.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#39

Post by codyb »

Retric wrote: post #12
admiralspoo wrote: post #10

Comparing ethnically homogenous countries to the US is meaningless and downright deliberately misleading at best. There is significant variation in every state by race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

West Virginia is 92% non-Hispanic white (2018) and has the lowest life expectancy of any US state (74.8). Which clearly disproves that common hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... Life expectancy and overall heath in the US is strongly correlated to wealth. It’s a feedback loop, being poor directly results in worse access to healthcare etc, but also because it’s much harder for s…

I suppose you could be charitable to gp and think they were making the reverse racist good genes argument for Black people?

At least it’d be a new twist on an old racist trope.

Re: Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?

#40

Post by viking1066 »

Compare wealth and life expectancy of any ethnicity living in USA with the population living in their previous habitat, and the US population comes out on top.

Japanese Americans for example have higher life expectancy than Japanese in Japan, and I expect the same would be true for Ethiopians.

This shows the superiority of the American system.

I need to second the previous comment that this article is either based on deception or ignorance.

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