What’s
Wrong Today:
You may have seen the study by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council showing that younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the US.
Americans had the lowest probability of surviving to the age of 50. Overall, American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.
The report compared the US to 16 other high income countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
But we don’t just die by driving around while drugged and waving guns. People in the US experience higher rates of disease and injury and die earlier than people in other high-income countries. We had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, possibly a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades.
American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.
Youths fared no
better. The US has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries. Its young
people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans
lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other
countries.
Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in the 16 other developed countries and about one-third of the difference for females.
Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel, said:
fundamental is going wrong…This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the US to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse. “We expected to see some bad news and some good news…But the US ranked near or at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.
Below is a chart about infant mortality. You can see many more charts from the study here:
US newborns begin life at a health disadvantage: They have a shorter life expectancy than newborns in other wealthy countries. For decades, US infants have been less likely to reach their first birthday than infants born in peer countries. Outcomes such
as low birth weight are more prevalent in the United States and mortality rates up to age 5 years are also higher.
But, there are a few bright spots: Death rates from cancers that are detected by tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States.
Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure.
The very oldest Americans, those over 75, tended to outlive their counterparts, although older US adults reported higher rates of arthritis and activity limitations than seniors in England, other European countries, and Japan. This is problematic for the older US seniors who are experiencing lower mobility as a result of their arthritis. Access to the best cbd cream is the only silver lining for the increasing number of Americans who are suffering as a result of this condition. Americans shouldn’t just accept their arthritis, there are things they can do to prevent some of this pain. For example, some people can access these physical therapy seattle professionals who can help seniors to reduce some of this pain and get moving again. It’s vital that older people take care of themselves, so it’s worth getting in contact with a physical therapist in your local area if you’re experiencing arthritis or any other pain that is limiting your mobility.
The panel called the
pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the US health disadvantage” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years.
It is well known that the US spends more on health care than does any other country, but now we know that our health outcomes are generally worse than those of other wealthy nations:
(NOTE: PPP
on the chart above means Purchasing Power Parity, a comparison of economies based on standardized international dollar price weights, rather than official currency exchange rates)
On the other hand, our health care system cannot keep us from dying from violence, automobile accidents, or morbid obesity, three significant health threats for which the US comfortably leads all of these nations.
Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50. Americans were seven times more likely to die in a homicide and 20 times more likely to die in a shooting than their peers.
Although suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher. 69% of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26% in other countries, the study said.
In all, two-thirds of the mortality disadvantage for American men was attributable to people under the age of 50 and slightly over half of that resulted from injuries.
So,
What’s Wrong?
Once again, the Wrongologist asks: What
kind of society do we want?
This report should be a wake-up call: The high death rate among Americans under 50 due to easy access to guns, lack of health insurance, high rates of alcohol and
drug abuse, and other unhealthy behaviors, is sobering. Thankfully, there are drug rehab options available to those whose lives have been affected for the worse by their battle with addiction – there is help out there which could be a comfort to many.
The health disadvantages faced by our
children carry profound implications for tomorrow’s adults, the nation’s
economy, and national security.
Now
the question is: what is US society prepared to do about it?
As a
society, we waste enormous amounts of human potential because of our misplaced thought that freedom should impose
no limits on the actions of the individual.
We could
be less disturbed if it the report prompted a response from our government like:
But that will not happen, no matter how
solid the report’s scientific basis.
And despite the lead author of the report saying that the mess we are in “is not the product of a particular administration or political party”, one of our parties has long championed equal access to health care for all, while the other has fought that consistently. Why pretend otherwise?
Ideology is truly
at fault for the fact that the US is now among the least healthy of all the developed nations of the world.
2 thoughts (stated as a life insurance underwriter). 1) mortality is significantly impacted by childhood mortality. with income disparity widening the last several decades, our young folks are a distinctly less healthy group than those over 50. 2) re our health expenses – if you look at spending by age, you will see that our spending is similar to peer nations through middle age but spike at the older ages. we also know that we spend a significant portion of our health care dollar on the very old (last year of life) and on long term severely disabled. re #1 – we need to address income disparity, re # 2 – we need to attack fee for service and pay for outcomes, emphasizing best practices and a group practice model. – re 1 – hard to do, conservatives will howl. re 2, medical specialist will howl, so will for profit hospitals who thrive on fee for service.
sorry for the typos, but my editor killed himself.
My editor dies a little every day when she reads the 1st draft of my post!