Healthcare and illness is a commodity here, and improving health outcomes hurts the business model. Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?
American lifestyle is pretty awful. I suspect we have a higher percentage of over weight adults compared to other countries.
Definitely true, although there is heavy endogeneity there as well. If you go years between seeing the doctor, they have less opportunity to try to improve people's lifestyles. Also, improving lifestyles is often not profit maximizing for healthcare facilities (less billable procedures long-term, more time spent on specific patients today for the same billing), so they likely emphasize it less than places where incentives are more aligned.
What is interesting in the income quartiles by state the average for the top 25% if pretty concentrated between 86 to 88 years. Those that are 88 tend to be places where you think people live healthier - UT, VT, CA, CO. So just access to decent healthcare makes a big difference in life expectancy, given the spread from poor to rich. General lifestyle, once you have access to health care, accounts for about a 2 year difference. It would be interesting to see the same data for foreign countries that have higher life expectancies. I would bet their top 25% probably top out at around 88 also.
You may want to check out where we stand with obesity for a better understanding. It is actually quite impressive how long we live when you take into account how unhealthy our country is when it comes to taking care of themselves. Most Obese Countries in the World | ProCon.org Now the food industry certainly does not help and the catch 22 of freedom…
Our healthcare is actually quite impressive when you understand this reality. Americans as a whole are not committed to doing what is necessary to live longer. They want quick fixes.
So why do you figure we are so obese compared to other countries? Obesity is a health condition and countering it is part of what a good healthcare system should do. Other factors that contribute to it are income and education disparities, something we have more of than a lot of these other countries too.
Not much you can do when freedom and the food industry is out there marketing. It is crazy how good the food industry is at controlling people with their marketing. It takes a commitment. It is not hard to know how to take care of yourself. It is hard to commit to that though. Americans want quick fixes. And we are really good at providing that. I hit 197 in November of 2008. That was my trigger. Not crossing 200. Now I am 160 and ran an 18:53 5K for the Turkey Trot this past Thanksgiving. Most people are not committed to eating right and controlling their portions through in the exercise and it gets even harder. People do not have to go like I do either. I run 40 miles a week. It is my release. No electronics. Just the outdoors and my thoughts. But you can easily achieve a healthy lifestyle and arguably healthier by having more cross training involved that is less intense with a proper diet. I struggle to enjoy weights and a shoulder issue keeps me from doing much there. Now I am working on stretching more to go with the running.
Do you think other developed countries don't have freedom or food marketing? When I went to Europe, I saw ads for soda, beers, and a variety of other foods/beverages everywhere and nobody told me what I could and couldn't eat each day...
assuming genetics, diet, lifestyle (and stress) are factors… I’d be interested to see the data excluding out immigrants from each country. The US should be a statical mean as a land of immigrants. It would be good to overlay of less developed countries to see if the US is actually better. In other words, perhaps as a function of medical costs, there is actually a statistically better outcome for immigrants that would have had a shorter lifespan in an underdeveloped country.
They do, but most other countries that we can compare ourselves to--especially western countries--don't have close to the same obesity and/or metabolic disorder rates that we do. Such has been the effectivess of the sugar/carbs/processed foods trifecta. And it's killing us.
Something we agree about However, I would say that in some ways, it is incredibly hard to take care of oneself--meaning to radically change one's lifestyle...longterm--in light of the kind of effort needed to not only reverse decades of bad diet etc. but precisely because our food culture and the industry behind it ensures this difficulty.
I was shocked to see that in the US Hispanic life expectancy exceeds Hispanic non white. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR10-508.pdf
I agree with all of this. And there is no doubt we have made it easy to get trapped into an unhealthy lifestyle. The foods taste darn good! McDonalds/Chic Fil A/etc…have a strangle hold as they get the addiction started in kids. Then you add the processed foods at the grocery store that are so cheap. And…
Stop subsidizing corn farmers. Heck we wouldn't have high fructose corn syrup if we weren't flooded with corn. People who eat food made from subsidized products will have worse health
I have been in a couple of organizations that charge smokers an extra fee because we are a drain on the healthcare system as we get older. My argument has always been everybody is going to tax the system during their old age years. Us smokers are going to die younger so we will be less of a drain on the system in the long run......Makes sense to me!
We just spent 6 weeks in 3 western European countries, and I can attest to the relative obesity of Americans. Hardly scientific, I admit, but nonetheless conspicuous.
On the obesity and fat shaming oh my. A simple example of a bad system. I eat sunflower butter due to a nut allergy. There was one brand I liked had an option that did not have any sugar added to it (or fake nasty sugar). Publix in my area stopped carrying it because most folks bought the sweetened version. I mean, organic, natural sunflower seeds and corn syrup, what could go wrong. Now lets talk breakfast cereals….
