US slips to 49th in life expectancy

[Better Believe It]

US slips to 49th in life expectancy
By Sahil Kapur
October 25, 2010

The United States currently ranks 49th in the world in overall life expectancy, according to a study published in the academic journal Health Affairs, slipping dramatically during the last decade.

“As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined,” concludes the study, conducted by Columbia University health policy professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied, which will appear in the November edition of the influential peer-reviewed journal.

The noteworthy decline is highlighted by the fact that in 1999, the World Health Organization ranked the US as 24th in the world in the same category, life expectancy.

The report by Muenning and Glied found the prime culprit of the plunge to be America’s deteriorating health care system, marred by ever-rising costs and growing numbers of uninsured and under-insured individuals.

The findings present a stark contrast to the claim – today an article of faith in the American conservative movement – that the United States has the best health care system in the world.

Read the full article at:

http://www.healthcare-now.org/us-slips-to-49th-in-life-expectancy/

[Arugula Latte]

1. Wow.

Fucking PATHETIC!

World's greatest nation ... yeah, right.

[JuniperLea]

3. With the world's greatest healthcare...

Don't forget that! It's already the best, so we don't need no damn Obamacare... right?

[Arugula Latte]

6. Right! We don't have death panels like they do in, um, FRANCE, I'm sure.

:eyes:

[SugarShack]

2. K&R

[mediaman007]

4. Thanks to our "trickle down" health care organizations.

[CanonRay]

5. Must be because of the "death panels"

LOL. We're turning into a third world toilet.

[BlueDemKev]

7. I hate to say this, but.....

...lower life expectancy may be a good thing in the U.S. if the Republicans succeed in "phasing out" Medicare and "personalizing" Social Security.

[jgraz]

8. U-S-A! U-S-A!!

:puke:

[billlll]

14. uninsur NOT biggest problem; med ERRORS is, says that study

Study clearly spelled out the above.

ie. You are better off insured... BUT that shd lift longevity to european levels.... BUT med care here does NOT do that due to shabbiness of the care here...
Med errors
Unnecess surgery
Dirty hospitals thus infections
Sloppy doctors etc etc

Private profit seeking nailed as the cause of shabbiness... Nailed by the study.

Journalists keep missing these key points. Sigh. Tho the study states all clearly.

[indepat]

9. Falling from 24th place to 49th since junior's reign began is but a small price gladly paid for the

joys of a fully implemented RW PNAC agenda, a society in which access to health care is limited, large corporation often pay little or no income taxes, and the most affluent send a smaller percentage of their total income to Uncle Sam than do their secretaries. Look for the US ranking to continue to plunge over the next decade, exacerbated greatly by the on-going catastrophe along the Gulf that is mostly being hidden from the public like the liberally-dispensed Corexit dispersant is hiding all that oil. ;)

[Jim__]

10. Yeah, but how many of those top 48 countries have socialistic health care.

Better dead than red!

:sarcasm:

[Fire1]

11. Gee, I wonder why?

:sarcasm:

[the redcoat]

12. Not me!

I stopped consuming fast food, and soda/HFCS, only occasionally drink alcohol, don't smoke, and started eating organic when possible.

I'm proud to not be one of those people contributing to ranking 49th when we're "supposed" to have the greatest medical care in the world.

[Better Believe It]

13. The French drink, smoke and eat a lot of non-organic food. So how come are they number 1?

Ahhhh .... They have a better and cheaper not for profit health care system!

[marmar]

15. And eat lots of meat, butter-drenched croissants, rich desserts and lots of fromage....

nt

[Better Believe It]

18. I love visiting their pastry shops!

[marmar]

20. Fauchon.....It's like a gastronomic Disneyland.

nt

[KillCapitalism]

16. We are falling so hard & so fast on nearly very index.

It's just sad, give it another ten years & we'll rank below most of Africa.

[TBF]

17. "The only advanced democracy without a universal health care program"

That pretty much sums it up.

[NoPasaran]

19. With the Teabaggers taking over

I fail to see what the attraction of a longer lifespan might be.

[Igel]

21. The report is here.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.2010.0073v1.pdf

And the site you posted makes claims that the report itself does not. The authors speculate, but find themselves unable to come to any firm conclusions, as to the reasons for the "slippage"--which isn't based on declining longevity but smaller increases in longevity than other countries.

The researchers focused on the relationship between longevity and health-care systems, so that's where they have to focus their conclusions.

Oddly, one finding is that high health care expenses seem to correlate negatively with increased longevity. One possible inference is that it's not the quality of fixing ailments that's all important, instead the ailments themselves are at issue. This would point to something else entirely being the underlying cause of the rerankings. If so, there's no contradiction between having the best health-care system and slippage in the rankings, if we assume that the health-care system is there to mend and fix and not to prevent. This presumes a specific kind of health-care system.

If so, however, we might well have a more serious problem with definitions. Most of the truly serious ailments are likely to result from lifestyle and environmental factors--obesity, smoking, poor diet choices, lack of exercise, environmental contaminants. Then the "health-care system" has to make sure we exercise, eat well, etc., something that many people fixated on things like "personal freedom" and a "limited government" that doesn't dictate your exercise regime and diet, might objected to. It means the health-care system would also have to encompass the EPA and environmental regulations at the federal and state levels.

[SlimJimmy]

22. Agreed. Actually "reading" the report always helps.

... including the experience of diverse groups in the US data improves the comparative performance of the United States, since the superior survival gains of other Americans relative to non-Hispanic whites boosts the overall performance of the United States relative to that of other countries.

[maryf]

23. K&Rnt