World life expectancy

Looks like Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the leaders, although there are probably some nuances in the differences.

Just heard today that up to 80% of US homes that declare bankruptcy attribute debt to medical costs. Even people with excellent health care find out how marginalized they are, after a cancer or other catastrophic diagnosis.

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Can’t take it with. Some just want to bounce their last check from the grave.

Hope this holds true in my case, I’ll be able to see the LSU game with years to spare :slight_smile:

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I work for the U.S. Space Force (formerly Air Force Space Command). The space coalition partners in our office, i.e., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., France, and Germany, essential ride the coattails, live under the protective umbrella, of the United States, mostly gratis. Must be nice.

For those ignorant of the battle above:

The encouragement in the numbers is we care enough about one another that public health improvements have helped us all live longer.

On the other side of the coin, our longevity is going to place one hell of a burden on the future workers to simply help us in our old age. #SilverTsunami

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I swore off politics with the new site, but I’m compelled to at least say that there are a lot of moving parts here. Gov regulation of medical and insurance industry, occupational licensing, intellectual property, legal liability, conflation of insurance vs care, just to name a few. So anyone interested in this topic is encouraged to look deeper because it is just not as simple as medicare for all.

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And all that is just assuming that the difference in life expectancy is a function of healthcare, which in itself is not necessarily true. There are a lot of things that effect that statistic that are not necessarily people dying due to not getting care, in fact I bet its probably largely unrelated.

You forgot to mention being a Utes football fan. I’m pretty sure that alone has cost me 2-3 years off my life.

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Interesting that Haiti is 63.5 while Dominican Republic is 73.5

There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. Quite a bit indeed, but other countries have implimented a lot of different models. A lot of different systems exist.
It’s a worthy discussion.

To me the worst failure of Obamacare was the failure to provide a mechanism to hold insurance companies accountable to provide the care they advertised.

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I wonder how much the drug usage factors into those numbers. Also suicide is a burgeoning factor in the US.

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We need the discussion to find a compromise between the current extremes. Either extreme solution will risk complete reversal in the next cycle. We may be getting there when medical tourism to Panama is no longer better care for much less money. I think the solution will not be free and will not allow lottery type wins for providers.

The problem with compromise is that hybrid solutions are actually worse than either extreme in my opinion. Total free market or single payer each have their trade offs, and I can make arguments for either although on whole I believe in free market. Problem with hybrid is it just builds in the worst of each system without delivering the benefits of either.

You might be interested in the book “Enlightenment Now” by Stephen Pinker. He goes through much of what is better about modern life that can be attributed to principles of the enlightenment era. Life expectancy has increased do to many factors such as: less war, less homicide,less accidents (huge factor), sanitation (huge), improved medicine, improved nutrition (huge), and education to name a few.

Actually in this case that might not be true. Because of the differences in demographics it seems to me that a wide array of options and methods is most likely the best approach. It was another issue with Obamacare was the attempt to use a single scheme to solve a complex problem.

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