Posted on 12/09/2009 4:53:53 PM PST by reaganaut1
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States ranked 29th in the world in 2006 in life expectancy at age 50. That places it more than three years behind the world's leader, Japan, and more than one and a half years behind Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Iceland, Spain, and Switzerland. About 4 million Americans reach the age of 50 each year, so an average loss of one and a half years per person means an aggregate loss of some 6 million years of potential life, valued at anywhere from $600 billion to $1.3 trillion annually.
In 2007, the United States spent 16 percent of its GDP on health care, by far the highest fraction of any country. The conclusion that is often drawn from these numbers is that the U.S. health care system is extremely inefficient. In Low Life Expectancy in the United States: Is the Health Care System at Fault? (NBER Working Paper No. 15213), Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho conclude that it is not.
The authors demonstrate that mortality reductions from prostate and breast cancers have been exceptionally rapid in the United States relative to a set of peer countries. They argue that these unusually rapid declines are attributable to wider screening and more aggressive treatment of these diseases. Screening for other cancers also appears unusually extensive, and five-year survival rates from all of the major cancers are very favorable. Survival rates following heart attack and stroke are also favorable (although one-year survival rates following stroke are only average), and the proportion of people with elevated blood pressure or cholesterol levels who are receiving medication is well above European standards.
These performance indicators pertain primarily to what happens after a disease has developed, though. It is possible that the U.S. health care system performs poorly in preventing disease in the first place. Unfortunately, there are no satisfactory international comparisons of disease incidence. Some researchers report a higher prevalence of cancer and cardiovascular disease in the United States than in Europe, and biomarkers confirm that many disease syndromes are more prevalent in the United States than in England and Wales, for example. Higher disease prevalence is prima facie evidence of higher disease incidence, although those high incidence rates also could be produced by better identification (for example, through screening programs) or better survival. The history of exceptionally heavy smoking and the more recent increase in obesity in the United States suggest that a high disease incidence cannot be laid entirely at the feet of the health care system.
Evidence that the major diseases are effectively diagnosed and treated in the United States does not mean that there may not be great inefficiencies in the U.S. health care system, according to the authors. A list of prominent inefficiency charges levied against the system include: fragmentation, duplication, inaccessibility of records, the practice of defensive medicine, misalignment of physician and patient incentives, limitations of access for a large fraction of the population, and excessively fast adoption of unproven technologies. Some of these inefficiencies have been identified by comparing performance across regions of the United States, but the fact that certain regions do poorly relative to others does not imply that the United States on the whole does poorly relative to other countries. The authors also note that many of the documented inefficiencies of the U.S. health care system simply add to its costs rather than harming patients.
They conclude that the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely a result of a poorly functioning health care system.
International comparisons of longevity should adjust for race. The summary above mentions that Japanese live 3 years longer than Americans, but Asian-Americans have long life expectancies in the U.S.
From the HHS: "It is significant to note that Asian American women have the highest life expectancy (85.8 years) of any other ethnic group in the U.S. Life expectancy varies among Asian subgroups: Filipino (81.5 years), Japanese (84.5 years), and Chinese women (86.1 years)."
what is the expectancy for 65 year olds?
Good post. It is also important to note that the murder and accident rates are higher for the U.S. that many of its peers, thus contributing to the lower life expectancy.
You're pushing your luck now.
I'll be 65 in June.
America’s life expectancy is not 50 years old.
Neither is Japan’s at age 53.
I don’t know where they’re getting their numbers, but it smells like it came from a bull’s manure pile.
According to Wikipedia (not very accurate, but they refer to sources for this):
Japan’s life expectancy is 82 years, *NOT* 53 as claimed in this article.
Likewise, America’s life expectancy is 78 years, *NOT* the 50 previously claimed.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Many Americans prefer to live a lifestyle on the edge than conservative peer pressure minded countries like Japan.. Australia on the other hand.. am not so sure..
The relatively low life expectancy in the US is almost entirely due to the fact that many infant deaths that would note be reported in other countries are recorded in this country as infant deaths, which greatly increases our statistical infant mortality rate. In most other countries, if a child does not live more than a few hours, it is counted as stillborn or miscarried, which does not effect infant mortality or life expectancy figures. In China, the child must live for three days to be counted.
In the US, on the other hand, extraordinary measures are taken to save children who might not even be breathing at birth. These children, if they do not survive, are still considered live births, are issued birth certificates, and are considered to have died at a very young age.
If one removes this distortion from the statistics, infant mortality and life expectancy rates in the United States compare favorably with almost any country on Earth.
This has been posted before and I remember there being some sort of trickery used by the WHO to get those numbers. I just can’t remember what it was. Unfortunately I’m not on my own machine so can’t do a search.
......You’re pushing your luck now......
I am past that point a couple of years. I think that the life expectancy of a 65 year old is older than the ages cited for the average.
You’re reading it wrong. Look again.
The article is NOT saying that life expectancy is 50 in the USA. It’s talking about the life expectancy that a person can have after they reach 50.
This is a statistic that factors out all causes of death prior to age 50 so that it’s a measure of actual longevity rather than a figure that is distorted by infant mortality and other early-life causes of death.
Near as I can tell, we might be good for another 17-18 years.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus08.pdf#026
Maybe the lesson here is don’t have children; these populations ranking better than the US have dismal birthrates. You’ll live to be 376 years old, but will spend the last 286 years having your diaper changed by someone speaking a 3rd world language. What a bright future...
This argument has evolved into pure demagoguery by the RAT party.
The problem here is that these comparisons are apples to oranges. We know enough about human biology to say that the proper comparison is not U.S. to Sweden but U.S. whites to Swedish whites; Asian-Americans to Japan, China (whatever their heritage). And of course, U.S. blacks to blacks in Africa. That last one really puts a nail in the coffin of this argument.
If there were any intellectual honesty on the part of those who trot out these data, the U.S. would look just fine.
The first sentence:
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States ranked 29th in the world in 2006 in life expectancy at age 50.
...is saying that America ranks 29th in the world for life expectancy, that being 50. Which isn't the case.
is saying that America ranks 29th in the world for life expectancy, that being 50. Which isn't the case.
The sentence says "life expectancy at age 50." In other words, life expectancy from 50 on.
I give up.
Ah. I see.
Probably would have got it in one had they actually written: “ranks 29th in the world for life expectancy from age 50” instead of “...life expectancy to age 50.”
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