US life expectancy declines again

This short post is based on my responses to a Washington Post article, “U.S. life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I.” Life expectancy is improving elsewhere around the world but declining in the United States. This is a very dismal picture and says a lot about our politics and public policy.

MY MAIN COMMENT…
Unfortunately, politics seems to play a part in our declining longevity since dead people don’t vote. I don’t expect a turnaround under our current administration or as long as politicians see political genocide as an effective form of voter suppression. Harsh? Yes, but see my logic at https://mHealthTalk.com/voter-suppression/.

On the other hand, besides saving lives and extending longevity, an effective universal healthcare system focused on wellness and prevention could save well over $1.5 trillion each year in reduced healthcare costs. That’s based on current spending of $3.5 trillion/year, which is twice as much as other advanced nations pay per capita.

Added to that would be another $1 trillion/year in expected economic and corporate profit gains from a healthier and more productive workforce.

But which political party keeps opposing such common sense measures? Republicans still claim to be “fiscally conservative.” Yeah, right.
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In response to a comment about COLLEGE DEGREES VERSUS JOB OPPORTUNITIES…
And you’re finding it more difficult to payoff that student debt, even as you struggle to retool your skills with some new degree or certification while still responsible for supporting your family. You accumulate more debt and face the risk of financial ruin if you can’t land the right job and pay it off. Then you look in your bedside table at the revolver you bought to protect yourself and your family. To Hell with family — it’s time for you to check out, you think.

That’s the future of exponentially accelerating tech innovation and a corporate culture that requires CEOs to serve investment interests of shareholders above all else, including workers and society. And the wealth divide continues to widen. (See https://mHealthTalk.com/inequality/)
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In response to a comment about OBESITY AND THE FOOD SUPPLY…
According to HBO’s 4-part documentary, The Weight of the Nation, public health officials can now estimate average weight and longevity by zip code. They’ve seen lifespan differences of *over 20 years* between poor and affluent neighborhoods on opposite sides of the same town. Watch the videos and see the stats at https://mhealthtalk.com/cazitech/obesity/.
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In response to a comment BLAMING OBAMACARE…
The ACA, which largely focused on prevention, succeeded in getting millions more people covered by health insurance, but Republican sabotage would leave 32M more uninsured. That’s important, because Harvard Medical School researchers found that nearly 25% of people without insurance die early as a result. Intentionally denying certain populations (poor, minorities, etc.) healthcare is a cruel form of voter suppression that I call Political Genocide. (https://mHealthTalk.com/voter-suppression/)
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In response to a comment about UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE…
As a consumer advocate and founder of Modern Health Talk, I whole-heartedly endorse the idea of a single-payer national health care system, such as proposed by Bernie Sanders and leading doctors, but I think we need to go even further, and maybe not as fast.

Beyond just improving the efficiency of how healthcare is paid for and adopting the exceptionally efficient Medicare system for everyone, we need to address Prevention and the NEED for medical care in the first place. To further reduce the costs of providing medical care, we need incentives that focus more attention on overall health and wellness.

Even Benjamin Franklin knew, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” but our medical schools primarily teach new doctors how to diagnose and treat illness. That further encourages today’s fee-for-service business model that pays doctors to do more, test more, prescribe more, and treat more symptoms to keep patients as paying customers. Wellness education and incentives, however, go against that perverse profit model, so they often aren’t part of the curriculum.

Medicare-for-All would be a good step in the right direction, and it would likely lead to other reforms that emphasize wellness, because doing that dramatically lowers costs, and because it removes the incentives to artificially pump up profits for shareholders of healthcare stocks. See https://mHealthTalk.com/single-payer/.