Interestingly, within the US people who live on islands like Hawaii and Puerto Rico seem to have longer life spans. This is true even taking race and gender into account.
The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
121–130 of 399 posts
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you understand the comment. If the life expectancy drops, there are fewer elderly to care for. If people don't make it to 70, you don't have to care for 70+ year Olds. It is a fair thought experiment to explore. Depending on what your priorities are, it could be optimal for everyone to die before retirement age.
Sure, but the problem is that there is not enough of a young population to support the older population. So if the life expectancy drops because younger people are dying more, that just makes the inbalance even worse, with the population being even more top heavy.
As a thought experiment, if you killed everyone when they turned 70,that wouldn't worsen the imbalance, it would help it. It is more of a question of the type of death, and the onset of disease.
There are broad classes of life extending Healthcare that you could remove with minimal impact on worker productivity, but still reduce life expectancy. Simpler yet, you could just deny oncology or cardiovascular treatment for anyone over 65. Life expectancy would plummet with no impact on workers.
I'm not saying I agree with this approach, but rather saying that someone who points this out is not misunderstanding the topic.
Furthermore, like it or not, this type of cost benefit analysis is baked into the treatment analysis of every country on the planet with socialized medicine.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not necessarily recklessness. Cars in the US have gotten much larger and heavier in recent years. A Ford F150 might be safe to drive, but it’s not safer for pedestrians and other road users than the smaller cars we used to have.
I bet phone usage is also a factor. Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it’s only within the past 10 years that the whole “distraction economy” became a thing, so while people may have used phones to communicate back in the day, nowadays they might be using the phones even more just to attend to those distractions.
The phone usage thing also affects European countries though. Large cars becoming more common is an issue more unique to the US.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant only Medicare and Medicaid. The US government spends on Medicare and Medicare more then any other country on healthcare.
Between Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA, there are more Americans with socialized healthcare than Britons in the NHS.
Also - Medicare is for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor and indigent, and the VA for current and former servicemen, neither of the three groups are good risks. You'd expect higher than average costs even in a well-run system.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#125The original article points out that the primary difference between the US and the UK (as well as other peer countries) is that you're much more likely to die young in the US. A 5-year-old in the United States has a 4% chance of dying before age 40, whereas a 5-year-old in Australia, Austria, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Switzerland has ~1% chance of dying before age 40 (val…
Woah! Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK - 5.2. In US - 12.5. (both have tens of thousands of KSI, but the US has over twice as many per cap. In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!) Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to b…
Youth suicide has always been pretty bad in the US and it's getting worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/youth-suicide-rates-are-...
That's from 2019, numbers for the last 3 years are a little harder get but like attempts went up but deaths went down at least in most places but in a couple places deaths shot up a lot?
https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/news/042722-COVID-adolesc...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/youth-suicide-attempts-...
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include gang members. So what if they were? It's pretty damn sad for a person young enough to be considered a child to die from gun violence regardless of who they were! A sad societal failure on top of our failure to set them up with life circumstances that made them unlikely to fall in with a gang.
It matters because it’s ineffective to pursue the wrong root causes.
Agreed. We should implement policies that prevent guns from getting into the hands of children, regardless of whether they're gang members or not.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#127"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of. And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of…
Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic. People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen. Hell, about an hour ago a cop tailgated me while I was going 15 over the limit, wove through traffic to cut me off, run a red light, then damn near ran another driver off the road. No lights, no emergency, just an asshole. This is the behavior you h…
>There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
Any hypothesis as to what it is? I think it is a lack of community. We've become transactional and virtual/online communities are not sufficient.
In terms of driving I think it got a lot worse during the pandemic because with the lack of daily commuter traffic allowed people to drive faster and hence more recklessly.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#128"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of. And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of…
Drivers in the US just seem incredibly aggressive to me. I remember crossing some street in downtown Pittsburgh, and a car coming towards me. The guy was clearly seeing me, and accelerating instead of slowing down. I jumped forwards and survived.
American people seem aggressive in general, and I say that as one. I didn't realize how bad it was until I finally went on a vacation overseas. I don't know if it's something in the water or what.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
It matters because it’s ineffective to pursue the wrong root causes.
Agreed. We should implement policies that prevent guns from getting into the hands of children, regardless of whether they're gang members or not.
Sarcasm noted. Hopefully you understand a multi-pronged approach is needed.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#130"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of. And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of…
>"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." >(The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and business, found himself without health insurance when…
That's really tragic to hear. In your case doesn't the ACA limit your out of pocket max?