Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve healthcare, nutrition and lifestyles.
A baby born in the United States in 2004 is expected to live an average of 77.9 years. That ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Researchers say several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one, they say, is that 47 million people in the United States lack health insurance, whereas Canada and many European countries have universal healthcare.
But “it’s not as simple as saying, ‘We don’t have national health insurance,’ ” said Samuel B. Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s not that easy.”
Among the other factors researchers cite: obesity, racial disparities, infant mortality rates.
Of course, you have to care about more than yourself or your own family – if you think the question is worth considering.
Two other recent discussions here and here.
Mustard, how is the blue fuck do you get racism from what I said?
Are you actually crazy, or do you just like to try to get people to defend themselves against your wild accusations because that’s how you get your kicks?
Jesus. This place has gone straight into the shitter lately, and you have Mustard and Fusion to thank. I think it’s time I left DU to the sheep from the other DU.
>>Jesus. This place has gone straight into the shitter lately, and you
>>have Mustard and Fusion to thank. I think it’s time I left DU to the
>>sheep from the other DU.
Oh boo hoo. Boo frickety hoo! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
And btw, if you think of any statistics to support your silly allegations that “it’s astounding how far up the list we go for example, when one removes the high rate of death by gang on gang violence.”, please leave them before you go.
Oh, I forgot, you’re ALREADY gone and can’t reply.
Buh-bye.
Fusion – Moran? There were only six errors in swdragoon’s sentence.
#65, #43, #42,
malren (a.k.a. Mr. Body) was killed by Colonel Mustard in the Blogroom with the keyboard.
Did I guess right?
ROFLMAO…
#68 – me,
Dang!! I missed a perfectly good pun. It should have been:
malren (a.k.a. Mr. Body) was killed by Colonel Mustard in the conversatory with the keyboard.
This is actually a pretty article to analyze if you take the time to read it.
The life expectancy in other countries is rising and countries with a large population like the USA (#3 in the world, right after China and India) can’t statistically lead a per capita statistic.
One of the factors cited in the article was obesity. I have no doubt that will be a larger factor in the future.
The countries with highest life expectancies also have the lowest birth rates. The death rate of children until about age 25 is much higher than adult, so it is not surprising that countries with super low birth rates like Italy, Switzerland, Monaco, Germany, Denmark would not have these statistics skewed in their favor by a demographically smaller sub-25 year-old population as a result.
#71, H
Or the numbers are skewed because they have such a low infant mortality rate. The US has a relatively high rate among developed countries.
Much of that comes from better pre-natal care that comes from the universal health care offered to all their citizens. Healthier diets for both pregnant mother and breast fed baby also help.
Can we please have a threaded discussion board, John, so I can ignore the tit-for-tat?
Revive your Cage Match threaded discussion board, and provide a link to an automatically created topic for each posting, instead of this antiquated, linear nonsense. It’s really hard to tell who is insulting who, or more to the point, ignore those posts.
Thanks.
Nevermind. Cage Match is still there and doesn’t really thread replies, either.
> Among the other factors researchers cite: obesity, racial disparities,
> infant mortality rates.
Let’s deport all the illegal immigrants to increase our Life Expectancy statistics. Discuss amongst yerselves…
Seems to me the parts of health care where the government is less involved, like glasses and teeth, are the ones with the best prices and availability. I’d like to try the Ron Paul approach of eliminating government regulation and see what happens. Dropping the AMA wouldn’t hurt either.
#60 — yes, miracle cures are great, i love ’em, routine medical care on a massive scale would be even better!
#65 — malren, speaking for myself, i don’t think you’re a racist at all, i just think you have overstated the number of deaths caused by homicide and i think you know it because you won’t post any numbers to back up your claims.
#75 – MikeN,
I disagree. Without presenting any real data, this just does not at all match my experience. Dental insurance coverage is the worst coverage I’ve seen. They only cover half the cost. They max at $1,000 or $1,500 per year. They don’t allow many necessary procedures, including X-rays and others if they think it’s more frequent than the norm. And, dental procedures are quite expensive. They don’t rival hospital costs. But, they’re high and poorly covered.
Eye-glasses are often not covered at all and cost a couple of hundred bucks. This is typically an add-on for most insurance plans.
In general, I think that the medical coverage and the actual costs are worst where there is no government intervention. Actually, the worst possible costs are no government and no insurance coverage items that are purely out of pocket. People in network in an insurance plan tend to pay much lower prices than the uninsured. This is exactly backwards. Whenever either the government or insurance has negotiated a price, the price is far better than one would get paying completely out of pocket.
Perhaps I’ve missed the point you were attempting to make. But, IMNSHO, government intervention in health care improves it. Removal of any intervention allows for unrestrained greed. We need universal health care.
#75,#77
I have personally written an extensive insurance quoting system and I can tell you from experience with the numbers and plan details that dental plans are generally a bad deal. They cover almost nothing useful and what they do cover will generally end up costing you more than if you simply paid it out of pocket. Ditto for Vision plans. Ditto for thrown in Life Insurance plans (better to get one independent of your health insurance provider).