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Life expectancy seems similarly hard to game and pretty poor for the US.
by hotpotamus 4y ago
Life expectancy seems similarly hard to game and pretty poor for the US.
- tptacek 4y agoLife expectancy in the US is heavily biased because of traffic fatalities. That's bad, but not an indicator of poor health care.
- nosianu 4y agoThat statement dopes not tell us much without you also telling us how that is handled in other countries. If you look at "List of countries by traffic-related death rate" the USA is far from the top of that list, so other countries would have it much worse with their own life-expectancy impact. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
- MagnumOpus 4y agoCompared to developed European countries (that you should compare them to), it is at the top of the list, 2-5x higher rates per capita. Same goes for homicide rates which the above poster also mentioned.
- jandrewrogers 4y agoActually, life expectancy is badly skewed by the rates of fatal injury when people are in their 20s, which ruins the average. The US has anomalously high fatal injury rates in young people due to things like automotive accidents and homicides. If you remove fatal injuries and similar from the statistics, Americans have among the highest life expectancies.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI suspect drug overdoses are mixed in there too. I believe there are also significant differences between the states (with fairly predictable trends). I suppose it all depends on how you measure public health, but the picture seems grim regardless.