U.S. Life Expectancy Lags. Why?
You very well may think that with all the advantages the United States has in Medical Research and expertise, along with what it spends, that it would have a corresponding preeminence in life expectancy. This simply is not so. Would it surprise you to learn that Jordan, in the middle east, has a greater life expectancy than the U.S.?
The fact is that there are 41 countries that enjoy a life expectancy greater than what a newborn can anticipate in America. Japan is in the lead where a female born today can expect to live to 86. Although the U.S. prides itself on it’s perception that it offers the best health care in the world, that belief is contradicted by the fact that in just two decades, American life expectancy has fallen from 11th to 42nd.
This all stems from a report that U.S. life expectancy increased marginally from 77.8 years in 2004 to 77.9 in 2005, the latest statistics available from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Many factors contribute to lower U.S. life expectancy. Among them are:
* 45 million Americans lack health insurance
* Obesity is on the rise
* Racial disparities - Black Americans live shorter lives
* Higher infant mortality
The three leading causes of death in the U.S. are heart disease, cancer and stroke. So, it’s clear that reduction of the occurrence of heart disease and cancer along with further inroads toward reducing tobacco and alcohol use, controlling blood pressure, reducing cholesterol and regulating blood sugar will help to reverse this downward move in comparison with global trends.
One thing is certain. The endless debates in Congress and elsewhere about how to eliminate the utter chaos of the American health care system will not end any time soon. Consequently the U.S., in all probability, will not move up in the life expectancy charts until a lot more Americans are either covered by health insurance, or brought into a system where medical care is affordable.
If there is to be any improvement in American life expectancy, we have a long wait ahead of us.
Please let us know what you think by commenting below.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Most of the countries that do better than the US do not eat anywhere as much red meat or fast food as we do.
I believe it is as simple as changing your diet to more complex carbohydrates (not empty carb calories), to include as much organic label as possible.
October 13th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Every year the life expectancy in this country inches upward. Constantly we are bombarded with how we are killing ourselves by eating to much of this or that, not exercising enough etc. This week coffee is bad next week it is good, fat is bad, fat is good. What are we to believe? If we are killing ourselves how come we keep living longer?
I would also submit that most countries that have higher longevity rates than this country have a more homogeneous DNA pool than the US does. Their populations are not subject to some of the race or hereditary factors that affect certain groups in this country.
The health care system in this country is not going to get any better when the power hungry politicians and bureaucrats become the administrators our health. Government is notorious for cost overruns, mediocre service and poor planning. Imagine health care personnel with all the compassion and attitude of the DMV doing heart surgery on you.
The system is not going to get fixed by lowering the standards of care for those that can afford it just to make it fair to the minority of the population who can’t or won’t pay for it.