Younger and Deader

Virtually all of the life expectancy statistics you read are either from birth or some other younger measure of viability. Sometimes, life expectancy is measured at age 50. But there are very few analyses of life expectancy differentials among people under the age of 50. And if you are a powerful NRA adherent, you really won’t like the numbers when the United States is compared to other nations in these younger ages. The title of a 378 page comparison study entitled U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health released on January 9^th says it all. It was researched and written by a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

The online summary reads: “The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. For many years, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries. This health disadvantage prevails even though the U.S. spends far more per person on health care than any other nation. To gain a better understanding of this problem, the NIH [National Institutes of Health] asked the National Research Council and the IOM [Institute of Medicine] to investigate potential reasons for the U.S. health disadvantage and to assess its larger implications.

“No single factor can fully explain the U.S. health disadvantage. It likely has multiple causes and involves some combination of inadequate health care, unhealthy behaviors, adverse economic and social conditions, and environmental factors, as well as public policies and social values that shape those conditions. Without action to reverse current trends, the health of Americans will probably continue to fall behind that of people in other high-income countries. The tragedy is not that the U.S. is losing a contest with other countries, but that Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are demonstrably unnecessary.”

The highest U.S. rate differentials could be traced to three targeted areas: gunshot mortality, automobile accidents and drug addiction. With shooting incidents drawing national attention, and the NRA arguing that we need more guns in the system (their membership appears to have grown by an average of 8,000 new members a day since the Sandy Hook massacre), “The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.

“Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. ‘The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,’ said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. ‘You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.’” New York Times, January 9^th.

“We don’t fare particularly well in the disease area either or in the general comparisons of life expectancy under the age of 50: “Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetesrates.

“Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and 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.

“Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.” NY Times. Our eating habits suck. We seem to be nutzoids behind the wheel (but we do have more cars per capita, which is a partial explanation). And we love, I say love, to shoot each other and even ourselves. We even have a constitutional amendment to support that vicious proclivity. So join the NRA, contribute hard cash to lobby against gun control and keep the tradition of sinking life expectancy as one of the things America seems to be doing better and better every year.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we also seem to be pretty good at “stupid” too!