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U. S. Ranks 42nd in Life Expectancy
By Cindy | August 13, 2007
Is it surprising that American life expectancy is falling compared to other nations? I am disturbed by the trend. An Associated Press article, U.S. slips behind others in life expectancy rankings (Ohlemacher, Stephen 2007) was run in our local paper, The Tennessean, on Sunday, August 12, 2007. It pointed out that “Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.” In listing the major factors, personal accountability, habits or choices were not listed.
A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say…
Among other factors:
- Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a thrid of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
- Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.
- A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.
I think personal accountability for our actions is the number one factor why U.S. citizen’s are falling in life expectancy. Our health problems stem from not dealing with preventative measures of our own exercise and diet priorities. Heart Disease is the number one killer for men and women in the U.S. 75% of the reasons heart disease is so prominent is from life choices. I understand the hereditary (uncontrollable circumstances), genetic connections to heart disease. However, many of the problems we face today as a nation is due to our choices.
Yes, we do need to work on improving our health care system. I’m not convinced that a national health care plan is feasible or desirable. When the article says, “45 million Americans lack health insurance,” what does it prove? How many of the 45 million choose not to buy health insurance because they think they’re too young, they don’t want that big chunk of money to go out of their paycheck, or nothing is going to happen to them? I think a majority of the 45 million choose not to buy health insurance, not because their incapable but because they don’t make it a priority in their lives.
What I really found disturbing was that “a relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.” HOW?! What is causing the high percentages? From what I can gather, children in all states have access to health care regardless of parent’s coverage or lack there of. I have to come back to this problem in a later post with some sort of explanation. I’m shocked.
Overall, the article points out a disturbing, yet telling trend. Why are we ranked 42nd and personal accountability not listed as a major factor? We need to develop a solution to the growing health care issue, understand why there are racial disparities and baby deaths. Obesity must be combated by individual commitments to make healthier, more active lifestyle changes. Personal habits and choices would have the greatest effect on U.S. citizen’s longevity.
Link acquired from ABC News since my local paper didn’t have a direct link to the article.
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Topics: Current Events |
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- End of the week link roundup » Workin On My Fitness on August 17th, 2007 at 11:15 am:
I had the good fortune to attend a health care summit recently and learned a great deal on factors affecting our physiological age (vs. our chronological age, i.e., what’s on our birth certificate).
Here’s the breakdown on the factors:
40% - lifestyle choices with the big three being obesity, smoking and leading a sedentary life.
30% - genetics. This is where I would look for your concerns about ethnicity (my preferred term over race) and health. There are factors that are passed from generation to generation, such as cholesterol, susceptibility to cancer, heart disease, etc. A quick Google search on sickle cell anemia and it’s relation to malaria is an eye-opening read.
10% - access to health care. I think this is where a lot of people want to point a finger when race is brought into the equation, i.e., minorities have less access to health care. While this is unfortunately true in some instances, it appears not to be a significant contributor. That being said, access to health definitely needs to be improved across the board.
I don’t have my notes with me so I can recall the other remaining factors.
hak
Thank you for breaking down the numbers. I understand it’s difficult to put into numbers one’s will to get something done, but the access to health care is a real eye opener when it comes to highlighting the “major factors!”
Cindy,
The overall problem yet is just that people are afraid to play the accountability card and start taking responsibility for the problems we have gotten ourselves into.
We have become so good at making pills to solve our problems that we rely too much on the pharmaceutical industry to help us fix what we screwed up.
I watched a movie yesterday called Children of Men and even though the theme of the movie was population control by not having any more babies the over all message was that the world in 2023 had gone into despair. They make reference to the year 2003 and 2007 in the movie it was really weird to see a movie set that close into the distant future make reference to years that we have already gone into.
I did a project last year that while I didn’t receive a good grade on it I did learn alot from it and on the heels of this article you wrote I am going to share with my readers the findings of what I learned in my research last semester.