Our "Empire" is among "worst of the worst" in life expectancy

February 19, 2011

The New York Times has an op ed that is worth seeing today, February 19th. It has a table that compares the IMF’s “Advanced economy” countries on various measures. The article says “on a whole host of measures we have become the laggards of the industrialized world,” and it points out that the newly-submitted Republican budget would makes things far worse.

The criterion seemingly most overtly connected to health care is “Life Expectancy At Birth,” where the US received a “worse of the worst” since the age is 78.24 (numbers were close here for many countries). (Other countries were very close in age of life expectancy and yet didn’t receive worse of the worse rating.)

The US also did poorly in certain other areas relevant to health. Such measures were “Food Insecurity” (people were asked if there were times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food you or your family needed). The percentage answering “yes” in the US (16%) was the highest of the 33 countries considered, with Korea sharing that percentage. No other countries were even close, except for Italy and Israel (15%), and Spain (14%). Countries in which nobody said “yes” to that question were Australia, Norway, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Malta, Iceland, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Slovakia. Our score on income inequality was by far the highest except for Singapore and Hong Kong. Our number of prisoners per 100, 000 (related to health in my estimation, especially mental health) was off the chart at 743, with the next highest being France at 365. On unemployment we were only in the “Worst” category at 9% (but we all know our records are fudged, and the real figure is estimated at 15% I have heard), with with Greece, Spain, and Portugal being in the “worst of the worst” category (between 10 and 20%). In a category called Wellbeing Index (“percentage thriving” Huh?), we were in the “Best” category at 57%. Huh? There was no rating of the health care system, but we all know it.

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