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 international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
“Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world cannot produce reporters literate enough in statistics to write an article like this one, without getting stuff wrong or misleading the reader.
What the article does not make clear, is that the actual data cited show that life expectancy in the U.S. has increased steadily (p 34, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf). The “falling behind” relative to some other nations is caused by their increasing longevity at a faster rate. The U.S. is in a very different situation from Africa and Russia, where life expectancy is actually declining.
Also unaddressed is the effect of large immigration into the U.S., and efforts in American hospitals to treat premature babies (i.e., when these treatments are unsuccessful, they add to mortality statistics, but in many countries, such infants are not counted as live births, and so go unrecorded).
Where do I begin?? I shouldn’t be surprised that “lack of access to health care” is fingered as an all-purpose whipping boy for “slipping life expectancy.” As Wilfred (#1) correctly points out, life expectancy in the USA has steadily INCREASED over the past 50+ years, even in the face of an admittedly less-than-perfect healthcare payment system. Even the Canadian quoted in the AP article admits that national health insurance isn’t the panacea that the MSM, the Democrats, and Michael Moore make it out to be. As someone working IN the healthcare system, I can agree with one reason cited for other nations outliving Americans: OBESITY. It shocks me to see the increase in overweight, obese, and morbidly obese patients, both adult and pediatric, in the 10 years since I finished my medical training. We eat too much junk food, exercise too little, and then expect all of the ills that we subsequently develop to be cured with a pill or surgery. What ever happened to the deadly sin of gluttony???
Joshua 24:15,
First word I thought of — obesity.
Frightening the percentage of folks now who are not just slightly overweight or pleasingly plump but obese — it causes an immense increase in health issues that KILL.
Josshua wrote: “As someone working IN the healthcare system, I can agree with one reason cited for other nations outliving Americans: OBESITY. It shocks me to see the increase in overweight, obese, and morbidly obese patients, both adult and pediatric, in the 10 years since I finished my medical training. We eat too much junk food, exercise too little, and then expect all of the ills that we subsequently develop to be cured with a pill or surgery. What ever happened to the deadly sin of gluttony??? ”
Amen Dr. Joshua. In this contry we are into all kinds of extravagant life style choices that don’t cooperate with long life — obesity being the primary one. I am a guilty party. In the past two years I have been under conviction and for the first time in 20 years am at a healthy BMI. It is amazing how much better I feel and how much better medical tests show my body to be functioning. Come on Christians everywhere — lets take care of these “temples” of the Holy Spirit. How effective can we be at spreading the gospel from an early grave. If we spend half as much time on te sin of “gluttony” as we do on “sodomy” we would be a very different people.
Regarding the wonderful health care of France and the other G-8 nations, most of these nations permit passive euthanasia (witholding food and water from “useless eaters” such as disabled infants, and the elderly) and France recently joined the Netherlands and Belgium in permitting active euthanasia (deliberate use of drugs to end life).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/665372.stm
Euthanasia of the disabled actually improves the health care ratings of the G-8 nations. If you remove preemie infants (which are counted as live births in the US, but who have a high child mortality) and call them “fetal deaths” or “after birth abortions” which is what live preemies are called in France or the Netherlands, then when despite the best efforts of physicians the baby dies, this will greatly reduce societal life expectancy in the US (by the 75 years or so that that child would have lived had he been healthy), while falsely improving life expectancy in the G8 countries.
Similarly, since bumping off a disabled Dutch 70 year old with a mild stroke will only reduce his expected life expectancy by about 5 years. Euthanasia (whether active or passive) of older adults will not noticeably decrease life expectancy rates.
http://fn.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/89/1/F2.pdf
I enclose the numbers for late fetal death (after 28 weeks) for the US and selected european countries
From: http://www.oecd.org
3rd trimester death (not related to abortion) per 1000 live births
US: 3.3
Canada: 3.3
Netherlands 4.7
Belgium: 4.9
UK 5.3
France: 4.6
Gosh all those 3rd trimester “miscarriages” in France home of wonderful preventive care.
And yet life expectancy is better once you manage to get out of the French creche.
France: 79.4
Belgium 78.1
Netherlands: 78.6
UK: 78.5
US: 77.2
Canada: 79.7
Also consider that Japan and Western Europe have drastically decreased birth rates, to the point that they aren’t even reproducing themselves any more. That indicates in the not too distant future their death rates will shoot way up (lots of deaths, few births to offset the deaths). Not much of a prospect, that!
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas