Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Living Long and Prospering

The National Center for Health Services announced that US life expectancy has declined by about a month. With rates in other countries rising, this is being cited as an indication of the worsening state of health care in the US. It is not. The real US life expectancy is actually higher than almost every nation. Three things bring the announced rate down.
The US counts infant mortality from day 1 - most other nations do not count for up to a week; no other nation has our ridiculous number of deaths via automobile accident; and the #1 cause of black male (16-30) deaths is from shooting each other.
These things have nothing to do with the quality of health care but have a major effect on reducing the average life expectancy here.

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