[HN Gopher] Why Americans Die So Much More Than Europeans
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Why Americans Die So Much More Than Europeans
Author : robg
Score : 14 points
Date : 2021-09-12 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Another important factor I think is something that Robert
| Sapolsky's research has brought to light.[1]. Inequality and
| poverty _itself_ causes significant health burden. That is to
| say, even when one accounts for the material disadvantages of the
| poor, different lifestyle patterns and so on, stratification
| itself contributes to adverse health outcomes in lower classes.
|
| > _" Psychologist Nancy Adler has demonstrated that how people
| rate how they are doing, relative to others, is at least as
| predictive of health or illness as are any objective measures
| such as actual income level, and research by epidemiologists
| Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett has shown that by just about
| every health indicator--infant mortality, overall life
| expectancy, obesity, you name it-- inequality can be even worse
| than poverty. In the Whitehall studies, Marmot found a fourfold
| difference in rates of cardiac disease mortality between the
| lowest and highest rungs of the British Civil Service, despite
| the fact they were all paid a living wage"_
|
| All of the outcomes based effects on death in this article are of
| course real, but it's astonishing that, according to the research
| of Sapolsky and others, inequality itself can cause stress and
| inflammation responses that can account for up to half of
| perceived difference in health outcomes.
|
| American society by and large is simply significantly more
| stressed and it has real impact on the biology of the population.
|
| [1]https://newrepublic.com/article/153870/inequality-death-
| amer...
| cheschire wrote:
| >> Americans die more from car accidents, not because our
| fatality rate per mile driven is unusually high but because we
| simply drive so much more than people in other countries.
|
| This is ridiculous. I've lived over a decade on both continents
| and it's not the number of miles/kilometers driven that matters,
| it's how terrible American drivers are. In the USA I see things
| every 15 minutes on the interstate that in Europe I would have
| called the police on.
|
| American culture seems to have this endless desire to grow,
| improve, escalate, promote, hustle. It permeates every single
| aspect of life, from home buying to what is put on the dinner
| table.
|
| Live fast, die young, I guess.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| When one corrects for obesity, this usually goes away. Put it
| another way, American obesity and metabolic disease can almost
| entirely account for the gap.
|
| Regulation prevents market forces from correcting the gap. For
| example, insurance cannot charge higher premiums based on weight
| or lifestyle health status.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| Insurance does charge higher for smokers and that is certainly
| a "lifestyle health status".
| sprafa wrote:
| Can you share sources/data?
|
| The fact that Americans are so obese it's draining down their
| lifespan in a collective way is still something that sounds
| worthy of study.
| Arnt wrote:
| I quote at length: "Infants in the U.S. are considerably more
| likely to die in the poorest counties than in the richest
| counties, and this is true for both Black and white babies.
| Black teenagers in the poorest U.S. areas are roughly twice as
| likely to die before they turn 20, compared with those in the
| richest U.S. counties. In Europe, by contrast, the mortality
| rate for teenagers in the richest and poorest areas is exactly
| the same--12 deaths per 100,000. In America, the problem is not
| just that poverty is higher; it's that the effect of poverty on
| longevity is greater too."
|
| Are you suggesting that obesity makes a difference in the US
| but not in Europe? Or perhaps that obesity varies in the US but
| is uniform in Europe?
| truculent wrote:
| Those market forces are present in Europe?
| adonovan wrote:
| Until recently, insurance companies could refuse entirely to
| cover a "preexisting condition" such as obesity. Those market
| forces were good for noone but insurers.
| tropdrop wrote:
| I was surprised to see no examination of the American healthcare
| system vs. those of the European countries listed anywhere in the
| article.
|
| Doesn't it make sense to see life expectancy fall for every age
| category when every age category and group have to contend with
| the same byzantine and terrifying medical industrial complex to
| get even the most basic care?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| "Infant mortality" plays a big role in life expectancy. The
| dividing line between a stillbirth and infant mortality can be a
| very fine line and varies widely in the developed world.
|
| Strangely enough, the combined term (stillbirth + infant
| mortality) doesn't vary nearly as much. That says there's a big
| data problem with counting infant mortality, and thus a big data
| problem with life expectancy.
| asdfge4drg wrote:
| Is there even an elephant in the room? Most of these other
| countries have effectively free access to health care, whilst
| millions of sick American's avoid seeking care because of the
| crippling debt that comes with it.
|
| Also, I know how unpopular this opinion is, but as someone who's
| lived in America, several European countries, and Australia...
| the average American has a lower standard of living than the
| average European, and the bottom of society in America tends to
| fall much lower than the bottom in a European city.
|
| Life is more civilized in France, Italy, Spain than in the US.
| Sorry :D
| findalex wrote:
| What a title.
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