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>>People of Japanese descent: 84.5 years in the US, 82.6 years in Japan. What if someone was to add something like "People of Japanese descent: $85 000 average
by borisk 16y ago
>>People of Japanese descent: 84.5 years in the US, 82.6 years in Japan.
What if someone was to add something like "People of Japanese descent: $85 000 average family income in the US, $50 000 in Japan." (I've made up the numbers from personal experience) Obviously richer ppl live longer.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIf you assume Japanese Americans are average for Asian Americans, the actual number is $65,000 (see my link). In any case, I agree with you. Income is a major effect, although it's far from clear that this is due to income buying health care. In fact, most of the evidence suggests health care has nothing to do with it. For instance, during the RAND experiment, richer people were healthier than the poor regardless of which category they were randomly dropped into. (Observational studies since then draw less clear conclusions, since observational studies are crappy in comparison to randomized experiments.) Another fun fact. The shortest lived people in the US are the Lakota, who live 35 years less than Japanese Americans (not a typo, life expectancy = 50). This group gets free health care via IHS (I believe it is structured similarly to Britains NHS), so it seems that there are other factors at work. Huh, imagine that. Life expectancy is, in fact, not a great measure of health care, since it is affected by so many other factors.
- anamax 16y ago> This group gets free health care via IHS (I believe it is structured similarly to Britains NHS) IHS is pretty much a horrorshow. It's one of the best arguments against govt-run healthcare. It doesn't much matter if some govt somewhere can run healthcare well. The US govt runs healthcare badly. Fix that first.