Originally published at: U.S. life spans "falling significantly behind those in similarly wealthy European countries" | Boing Boing
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Boy, those Libertarians are really showing us what a “free” market can do!
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Break it down by race and wealth/income and you’ll see the system is working as intended.
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Lifespans in the US shorter than other rich countries…
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Something, something, “but mah freeeeedumb!!!”
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Apparently another cause is a massive uptick in suicides, overdoses, and deaths from alcohol consumption in working class communities outside of major metro areas and in rust belty places. There’s been a number studies showing huge drops in life expectancy and health outcomes in the US the last few years. One of the big shockers when we poked it with a stick was that there’s now enough of these “desperation deaths” to move the pin on life expectancy (apparently by a lot).
The dominant read is that it’s a direct result of rising income inequality, falling economic mobility and the erosion of the middle class.
So you can add that to the list of shit that’s killing us early.
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As long as there’s a speck of public Medicare or Obamacare, it acts like kryptonite on those free market supermen.
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Yes, but also, even white rich people are doing worse than poor people in Europe.
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I can relate; I felt ‘too old for this shit’ as early as 20.
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Same as in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed, although their drop in life expectancy was far worse.
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At some point when something is an outlier in enough ways, you should start excluding it from the category. The US is not a similarly wealthy country. The US is a very poor country run by a similarly wealthy elite.
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Add to that a massively indoctrinated populace: “We have the finest health care in the world!”
“We are the richest country in history!” and other jingoistic swill, and it becomes apparent that Those In Charge have no interest in changing things.
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I was born too old for this shit.
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Since american (mostly republican) taxpayers don’t want to pay for anybody else’s healthcare/general health care, the gvmnt has no incentive to disseminate knowledge about preventive healthcare. Eat garbage, sit on your butt, get sick, buy medicine. Or an overpriced, convoluted insurance plan.
EU nations tax citizens brutally, to pay for general and generous healthcare, and subseqeuntly practice extensive preventive healthcare starting in pre-school, with the specific goal to keep people healthy and out of the costly general healthcare system.
No mystery here
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The funny part is that taxes aren’t really much more than in the US, and in many cases are comparable or lower. But they do tax the rich a little more in some countries in Europe.
Not sure if that qualifies as ‘brutally’ though.
I’m reminded of the dramatic crash in life expectancy in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.
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Usually it doesn’t take long for someone to argue that:
- We Europeans wouldn’t even have a healthcare system without rich Americans financing all research and development anywhere ever.
- It is because we have such “homogenous populations”. You know, without those people ruining it for everyone.
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Of course the taxpayers ultimately do pay for poor people’s healthcare—because when those poor people’s health gets bad enough they head to the emergency rooms which are legally required to provide treatment regardless of the patients’ ability to pay. Obviously this costs more in the long run and provides worse outcomes for everyone.
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