The causes of decreasing life expectancy are fairly well understood and have little to do with the economy. We know many young people are dying early deaths of

The causes of decreasing life expectancy are fairly well understood and have little to do with the economy. We know many young people are dying early deaths of despair. We can make mental health easier to access (there’s a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy just to get pills for well understood mental illnesses). We can help folks avoid drug overdoses. One piece of low hanging fruit is to make opioids over the counter — that ways people aren’t _accidently_ overdosing on mislabeled fentanyl. And when they do OD, we can make sure they have safe consumption sites and narcan available (this is no different than a bar, where sometimes an ambulance has to rush away someone with severe alcohol poisoning). We can help folks fight obesity — calorie counts should be included on everything and farm subsidies should be reallocated to healthier foods and low-calorie alcohol sugars instead of HFCS. And lastly, COVDI-19 has been a big contributor to increased mortality. Anytime the US wants to get serious about the virus we can.