US women life expectancy drops to 36 in world was 22 in 1990

US shows little to no gain in life expectancy since 1990 while canadian women add 2.3 Years

But we are still Number ONE - by far - in how much we spend per capita on health care - we just spend it very poorly

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/healt ... ts.html?hp

actually they do show a gain - it was just " the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. "

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation,

I've noticed that we are a bit of an afterthought.
Who ever decided reproductive rights should be such a criminal concept?
And to completely forget we even have hearts, livers, brains and other organs! Ridiculous!

chunkyfrog - "I've noticed that we are a bit of an afterthought.
Who ever decided reproductive rights should be such a criminal concept?
And to completely forget we even have hearts, livers, brains and other organs! Ridiculous!"

and we fight the "war" on breast cancer with bake sales, walks and bicycle rides while he fight real ( but unnecessary) wars against places like Iraq by merely printing a trillion dollars to pay the costs. I wish they would do it the other way around, fight breast cancer with REAL money and raise the money for unnecessary wars with bake sales and bridge walks

And these years coincide w/the increase in the number of women who smoked cigarettes. Women of the "boomer" generation were the "smoking generation".

"And these years coincide w/the increase in the number of women who smoked cigarettes. Women of the "boomer" generation were the "smoking generation".

that happened elsewhere in the world too - i've lived for decades in Europe and the women there ( everyone in fact) smoke MUCH more than in the USA - although they have much high life expectancies - i wonder why?

For example, while 15% of US women reported smoking 23% of UK women and 25% of Dutch women did

http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/ch ... ence-of-sm

johnthomasmacdonald wrote:actually they do show a gain - it was just " the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. "

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation,

Not every group shows a gain, however. Several recent studies have shown decreasing life expectancy among poorly educated Americans. It might be possible to dismiss one study as a fluke, but when that result keeps popping up, you have to wonder. The most disturbing of these was published in August in Health Affairs. The full article is behind a pay wall, unfortunately, so I have only seen news reports, which isn't as good as going to the source. The number that stands out is a decline of five years in life expectancy between 1990 and 2008 for white women without a high school degree. A smaller decline of three years was observed among white men without high school degrees. A summary can be found at Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S. It is one thing to discover disparities between groups and find us falling behind other countries in the pace at which life expectancy increases, but far worse to see those disparities widening and some groups actually losing ground. Life expectancy in 2008 for white women without a high school degree was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree.

The authors of the study could only theorize about the reasons, so I will not claim that the decline is due to deteriorating access to health care for the poor. There are many possibilities, and the outcome could be a combination of all. Among other things, rates of high school graduation increased among white women over this period, so failure get a degree may be increasingly correlated with other problems. In addition, the percentage of of smokers actually went up among non-graduating women (but not men) from 1990 to 2008. However, the percentage without health insurance went up too, and I think it would be foolish to dismiss out of hand the proposition that we are falling behind other advanced economies and even, for the most disadvantaged, declining in life expectancy because we do the worst job of getting high quality health care to the poor.

Gee, I wonder what the solution might be...

KSMike wrote:Gee, I wonder what the solution might be...

Good one Mike!

Should I laugh or cry?

I read that some of the reasons for the US drop to 36 were the high obesity rate...high salt in the diet that is partially responsible for high blood pressure and diabetes.

And more protein-poor carbohydrates, sugar, and chemical additives than sensible people would feed their livestock!

PST wrote:The number that stands out is a decline of five years in life expectancy between 1990 and 2008 for white women without a high school degree. A smaller decline of three years was observed among white men without high school degrees.

All the mindless jobs are being automated. All the jobs that require no education are going away. Everything in society is becoming more complex. McDonald's new hires have associate degrees.

This puts the people you are speaking of under tremendous stress. Many of them turn to drugs, multiple sex partners, illegitimate children, single-parent households, poor health habits, government dependency, and on and on.

Poor life expectancy under these conditions is to be expected.

Universal healthcare will not solve this problem.

TheUglyTruth wrote:

PST wrote:The number that stands out is a decline of five years in life expectancy between 1990 and 2008 for white women without a high school degree. A smaller decline of three years was observed among white men without high school degrees.

All the mindless jobs are being automated. All the jobs that require no education are going away. Everything in society is becoming more complex. McDonald's new hires have associate degrees.

This puts the people you are speaking of under tremendous stress. Many of them turn to drugs, multiple sex partners, illegitimate children, single-parent households, poor health habits, government dependency, and on and on.

Poor life expectancy under these conditions is to be expected.

Universal healthcare will not solve this problem.

It does in other countries.

BlackSpinner wrote:

TheUglyTruth wrote:

PST wrote:The number that stands out is a decline of five years in life expectancy between 1990 and 2008 for white women without a high school degree. A smaller decline of three years was observed among white men without high school degrees.

All the mindless jobs are being automated. All the jobs that require no education are going away. Everything in society is becoming more complex. McDonald's new hires have associate degrees.

This puts the people you are speaking of under tremendous stress. Many of them turn to drugs, multiple sex partners, illegitimate children, single-parent households, poor health habits, government dependency, and on and on.

Poor life expectancy under these conditions is to be expected.

Universal healthcare will not solve this problem.

It does in other countries.

Bingo! Funny that. It's all fine for people to spin tales that comfortably fit their ideologies, but for some reason all those other countries with their own automation, drugs, sex, illegitimacy, bad habits, and government dependency stand as counter examples. In sum, those places American conservatives point to as places we don't ever want to be like seem to manage to keep their citizens alive longer than we do. If healthcare doesn't matter, what is it that extends the lives of Europeans? (I'm not counting the Canadians. Everyone knows that the cold extends their shelf lives, just like a refrigerator does hamburger.) Universal healthcare may not be a complete solution, because there probably is no single complete solution, but it will be a step in the right direction.

PST - it's sad how many americans don't even try to come up with solutions to our problems when they are raised, they just endlessly try to explain away the problems and throw up their hands and say "nothing can be done and blame the victim". If national health care isn't the answer, fine, but what is their solution to make things better. If the answer for all problems is that "nothing can be done", then in my opinion the US is Really finished, and deservedly so. What a difference from the nation that went to the moon.