The Sad State of US Life Expectancy: Scientists Warned A Decade Ago Amer. Lives Were Shortening: NPR
- 'Live free and die'? The sad state of U.S. life expectancy,' NPR, March 25, 2023. Ed. 🍏
- Life expectancy continues to decline in the U.S. as it rebounds in other countries.- Life expectancy around the world decreased in 2020 due to COVID-19. Most peer countries rebounded by 2021, while the U.S. continued to decline. GRAPH. Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented 2nd year in a row – down to 76 years.
While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the 2nd year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the U.S. did not.
Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S. reached a high in 2021. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found rising mortality rates among U.S. children & adolescents. "This is the first time in my career that I've ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it's always been declining in the US for as long as I can remember," says the JAMA paper's lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society & Health at Va. Commonwealth Univ. "Now, it's increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century."
Across the lifespan, & across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations. How could this happen? In a country that prides itself on scientific excellence & innovation, and spends an incredible amount of money on health care, the population keeps dying at younger & younger ages.
- An unheard alarm: One group of people are not surprised at all: Woolf & the other researchers involved in a landmark, 400-page study 10 years ago with a name that says it all: "Shorter Lives, Poorer Health." The research by a panel convened by the National Acad. of Sciences & funded by the National Inst. of Health compared U.S. health & death with other developed countries.
The results showed – convincingly – that the U.S. was stalling on health advances in the population while other countries raced ahead.
The authors tried to sound an alarm, but found few in the public or government or private sectors were willing to listen. In the years since, the trends have worsened. American life expectancy is lower than that of Cuba, Lebanon, & Czechia. Ten years later, here's a look back at what that eye-popping study found, & why the researchers involved believe it's not too late to turn the trends around. - Beyond bad habits: Americans are used to hearing about how their poor diets and sedentary lifestyles make their health bad. It can seem easy to brush that off as another scold about eating more vegetables and getting more exercise.
But the picture painted in the "Shorter Lives" report could shock even those who feel like they know the story. - Read More, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy
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- X- Post of same article in Gen. Discuss.*SEE COMMENTS, 'Live free & die'? The sad state of U.S. life expectancy
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217761590
- HOW PRIVATE EQUITY - PE IS PROFITING FROM US HEALTH CARE, ESP IN THE LAST DECADE.
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