pk10534 t1_izrb1md wrote on December 11, 2022 at 6:40 AM

I think we should probably be clear that life expectancy isn’t only tied to healthcare quality or expenses. Car accidents and gun-related homicides, for instance, are major contributors to U.S.’ life expectancy being so low, and those two problems wouldn’t go away with universal healthcare or any change to the health insurance system here. You might see some tangential effects, but it’s not going to change the fact that driving is dangerous and Americans drive a lot more than Cubans or Singaporeans. Mental healthcare under a single payer system might help reduce some homicides, but I can’t imagine that without massive gun control reform we would see homicide rates here fall to numbers we see in Western Europe or Japan.

Long story short, I just don’t think this is inherently the indictment of US healthcare it comes across to be at first glance - and anytime this issue comes up people for some reason think life expectancy is just about actual medical care, and it’s really a lot more broadly-encompassing than that. We need single payer healthcare here, but that alone is not going to solve some of the various issues that help determine a country’s life expectancy.

Zamaiel t1_izs3ps6 wrote on December 11, 2022 at 1:01 PM

> think we should probably be clear that life expectancy isn’t only tied to healthcare quality or expenses. Car accidents and gun-related homicides, for instance, are major contributors to U.S.’ life expectancy being so low,

Not really.

There was one study showing this to be the case, Ofstedt and Schneider I think, and they got so shredded on the maths that they had to go out and admit that they never intended to get it right!

The maths is not terribly hard, how many 18-year olds need to die to lower the life expectancy of 325 million people by one year? Is that more or less than the US lost through WW2?

pk10534 t1_izt0cdw wrote on December 11, 2022 at 5:10 PM

I think you missed the entire point of what I said, which is that life expectancy can be related to things not related to healthcare. The best doctor or hospital or insurance in the world can’t save you if an 18-wheeler hits you going 75mph. That’s more of an indictment on infrastructure and our choices related to cars and public transit than it does our healthcare model

Zamaiel t1_iztno48 wrote on December 11, 2022 at 7:42 PM

That is true, but not every factor affecting lifespan is created equal. My point is that violence and traffic deaths are just way, way to small to account for the differences we see here.

There has been a lot of research on this, particularly in the field of public health, and the major reason for the difference is in fact healthcare. Mortality amenable to healthcare, infant mortality, maternal mortality, under-5 etc.