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The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

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Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#131

Post by PeterisP »

jjevanoorschot wrote: post #6
legitster wrote: post #4

"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…

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.

A Ford F150 is most dangerous to small pedestrians (i.e. your kids or the kids of those you visit) in the driveway which you can't see over your hood due to its size.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#132

Post by sgc »

whakim wrote: post #97

The 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…

As you can see in his chart at [1] from the same thread, drugs, violence, and accidents only explain less than 1/3 of the difference, so the rest would be mainly various disease/lifestyle and care related issues (the overwhelmingly top causes of death in the US [2]). I think those graphs are a easy to misread, the long tail of somewhat poorer results is less dramatic than that younger gap, but actually includes much of the disparity. In [1], you can see that the last cause, cardiovascular, explains more of the difference than drugs, violence, and accidents combined.

[1] https://nitter.moomoo.me/pic/orig/media%2FFsjYUjhWcAEatMo.jp...

[2] "From 2020 to 2021, age-adjusted death rates increased for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death and decreased for 2. The rate increased 3.3% for heart disease (from 168.2 in 2020 to 173.8 in 2021), 1.7% for cancer (144.1 to 146.6), 22.5% for COVID-19 (85.0 to 104.1), 12.3% for unintentional injuries (57.6 to 64.7), 5.9% for stroke (38.8 to 41.1), 2.4% for diabetes (24.8 to 25.4), 9.0% for chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (13.3 to 14.5), and 7.1% for kidney disease (12.7 to 13.6)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#133

Post by PeterisP »

makeitdouble wrote: post #82
sparker72678 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article breaks it down; disparity is consistent across age, race, gender, income…

Curious how you isolate for race between two separate continents ?

Both USA and UK have a sizeable subpopulations of people of European, African and Asian descent, large enough to have reasonably reliable statistics on them.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#134

Post by rovolo »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #75
legitster wrote: post #4

"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…

JFYI, the ACA did have a large impact on the health insurance coverage through expanding medicaid. The percentage uninsured was halved from 18.4% to 9.1-9.8% (in states which expanded medicaid. In nonexpansion states, the uninsured percentage went from 22.7% to 17.1-19%).

I hear you about the health care situation though. Health insurance is definitely not the same thing as health care.

https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/migrated_legacy_fil...

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#135

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

roenxi wrote: post #112
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #70

Sure there will be lots of hypotheses for why this is the case. In my experience, though, you can almost ignore longevity and just look at these sociological differences that make the quality of life better for the English: 1. You could easily argue that frequenting a pub shortens your lifespan, but I just loved "pub culture" when I visited colleagues in England. It's a great antidote to loneliness. 2. You can argue…

It seems pretty likely that the US healthcare decisions at the federal level are to blame. This data suggests it isn't the access to healthcare that is to blame as much as the governance of the entire system is forcing bad outcomes. The effect here is too widespread to be "pub culture". I could see city planning being a contributor. But the effect is so extreme the place to start is deliberate policy. It would be har…

Nailed it. The tying of healthcare to one's job is its primary problem in the USA. This idiotic relationship arose because of incompetent legislation during WWII that was never fixed. The government applied wage caps, but failed to anticipate employers' substitution of "benefits" for wages. So companies sweetened the pot with health insurance to work around wage caps, and the government neglected to close that loophole. Huge and disastrous mistake.

Today, millions of Americans are deluded into thinking that their "employer-provided" insurance is free. Because the true cost is buried in pay-stub line items that nobody looks at (if it's even required to be there; I don't know), it's huge.

This "system" serves corporations, not people. Big companies get a workforce replete with people chained to dead-end jobs by their healthcare; insurance companies get fat, fat payouts; and small businesses and individuals get screwed.

My best friend runs a small business in the USA that actually makes things in a factory and employs people. Why the hell should be be an insurance broker as well? And if you're self-employed... Obamacare is the only thing saving your ass. And if your income isn't in the sweet spot, it's not really affordable either.

So we are really screwed hard. You'll never get Republicans to defy their corporate owners and lobbyists to reform this shitshow, nor will you get their base to comprehend that they're being ripped off and demand such reform.

Employer-funded insurance should be taxed out of existence and replaced by employer-provided CHILD CARE. Now that's something that keeps people out of the workforce and actually makes sense for an employer to provide.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#136

Post by selimthegrim »

avgcorrection wrote: post #34
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

Christ Jesus, the USA are on average as good as Merthyr Tydfil, the epicenter of Welsh coal mining, which Maggie Thatcher destroyed. It's bad, but no one anticipated it to be that bad.

Yeah, well, as long as I can sling code for 100K+ a year in this fine country, it’s not my problem what happens thousands of miles away over in Mississippi. —HN

You do realize some people on this message board live in Louisiana and Mississippi

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#137

Post by AmVess »

standardUser wrote: post #71
rolenthedeep wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought people in the US drove like insane idiots long before the pandemic. Weaving in and out of lanes, excessive speeding, road rage over the slightest inconvenience and, the dumbest one to me because it is virtually effortless, failure to use turn signals. It's very easy to drive safely but a good chunk of divers seem to outright refuse. Having said that, the data backs you up. 7% increase in per capita road fat…

Driving like idiots compounded by lack of traffic enforcement as police budgets and staffing decline. I just moved away from a pretty decently sized city, and the police there didn't do any traffic enforcement at all. Not enough manpower to cover traffic and crime.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#138

Post by Teever »

1123581321 wrote: post #129
Teever wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being sarcastic.

A multi-pronged approach that involves reducing the amount of guns in American is a surefire way to reduce access to guns by children, both in gangs and out.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#139

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

klooney wrote: post #118
slaw wrote: post #32

Earlier 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.

There are also hundreds of thousands more Americans going bankrupt from healthcare costs.

If Medi-* actually worked properly that wouldn't be happening.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#140

Post by Schroedingersat »

LanceH wrote: post #40
sammalloy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.…

Smaller cars are more dangerous in a multi-car accident. Most accidents only involve a single car. There is less control in larger vehicles. Everyone thinks they are a better driver than they are and the only way they'll end up in an accident is if someone else hits them. Add all this up and many want to drive larger cars.

> Smaller cars are more dangerous in a multi-car accident.

Smaller cars bear more of the risk in a multi-car accident from the more dangerous larger cars. The smaller cars themselves are safer.

It's like saying t-shirts are less safe than guns because they won't stop bullets.

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