Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions

by mcone • 9 years ago

313 304 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

swah• 9 years ago

I never understood why everyone is against smoking if it saves those corps money in the long run.

ceejayoz2• 9 years ago

Because we value lives over corporate profits?

mathgeek• 9 years ago

I wouldn't paint that generalization with so broad a stroke. Very few people truly value lives 100% of the time over corporate profits. If we truly did that, we would never turn a blind eye to many of the actions that corporations take while so many of us own their stock in retirement portfolios.

Live, quite unfortunately, is rarely so black-and-white.

Majestic121• 9 years ago

I think you missed the sarcasm (or I am too optimistic about GP ?)

reactor4• 9 years ago

because the last couple of years suck when you're dying from the things caused by smoking.

cfontes3• 9 years ago

Lung and throat cancer are no joke, I would rather save them money then die from it.

fiblye• 9 years ago

Slowly dying from cancer is expensive. Dying from a sudden stroke induced by a lifetime of lethargy isn't.

darpa_escapee• 9 years ago

I believe even smokers who die early from disease are cheaper in the long run compared to those who end up dying much later in life.

I think the same idea holds true for the obese because they tend to die early, as well.

Being old and sick is incredibly expensive. Living healthily enough to get to be old and sick is a monetary drain from insurance companies' perspectives.

walterstucco5• 9 years ago

Dying from a sudden stroke induced by a lifetime of lethargy isn't.

Lethargy has never gave anyone a stroke

But drinking 20 coffees a day for staying awake working 80 hours a week for your startup while you could easily have a normal job, that grants you a normal, quite life, had.

John23832• 9 years ago

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think many of the people responding to you missed the sarcasm.

centicosm• 9 years ago

While smokers or the obese might have a smaller total lifetime healthcare cost, the timing of the costs is likely a factor. As the bulk of healthcare costs typically come from end of life care, the cynic in me explains the concern/anti-smoking campaigns in the workplace as an effort to shift that large cost to a time when the person is a part of the public healthcare system and off the private insurance policy.

emodendroket• 9 years ago

Good news, everyone.

kalleboo• 9 years ago

Thank god, I was worried I would have to suffer on this idiotic planet for another 60 years

Sleeep3• 9 years ago

Did you mean for me to read that in Professor Farnsworth's voice?

Because I did.

niuzeta• 9 years ago

Good news, everyone! people are dying earlier, and you're one of them!

Yep, definitely a Farnsworth quote.

docdeek• 9 years ago

Every cloud, huh.

mack10012• 9 years ago

Sure, also understand that the productive segment is also be affected in turn impacting future GDP calculations. It's a net loss in the long run..

MacsHeadroom• 9 years ago

Are you sure about that? Don't most people stop being productive long before they die?

mack10012• 9 years ago

The article states that there are higher deaths of despair which affects younger population disproportionately. This impacts productivity and GDP calculations.

briantakita4• 9 years ago

Behold, the wonders of the Scientific Utopia of "Progress". GMOs, Big Pharma, Health (Sick) care system, Compulsory Medicine, outlawing of Natural/traditional "unproven" health care, etc.

Is it time to begin discussing the desirability/effectiveness of certain policies, institutions, & popular beliefs?

cfontes3• 9 years ago

Sorry, but without GMOs, Big Pharma, Health (Sick) care system, Compulsory Medicine people would be dying even faster.

I hate Bigpharma as much as the next guy but just look at the statistics of children deaths in the early 1900 it's clear something changed and medicine and vaccines are among it.

Completelly inflamatory statement...

briantakita4• 9 years ago

just look at the statistics of children deaths in the early 1900 it's clear something changed and medicine and vaccines are among it

As did the development of Public Sanitation, pasteurization, electricity, transportation networks, & information networks. Many factors into a complex system, yet attribution to a few select changes that just happen to benefit certain parties.

Perhaps it's time to revisit old assumptions based on old P.R. written by parties with conflicts of interest.

Completelly inflamatory statement...

Not completely, particularly when speaking to those in an "ideological echo chamber". It helps to desensitize people to opinions that challenge unspoken beliefs.

Also, why do we always need to capitulate to the ideologically narrow-minded? America succeeded due to Freedom of Speech & exchange of ideas.

evolve20173• 9 years ago

I'm unfortunately on mobile and can't write much - however, my understanding is that there is still some debate about the benefits of medication vs sanitation in overall mortality in Western countries. While this doesn't necessarily hold true for children, I thought I'd link to a discussion of this debate. (Can't find the reference I wanted...)

Here's a figure for death from infectious disease by the CDC - note that antibiotics don't appreciably change the rate in decline

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4829a1.htm#fig1

just a random find - this paper from 1902 mentions the debate, too, with some descriptions of 'natural experiments' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2401255/?page=1

Also, I am not saying that antibiotics and medications don't work - just that the story actually is more interesting than one might initially guess.

Lastly, these data discuss Western populations - I've heard the opposite may be true in poor countries.

wott2• 9 years ago

I am not sure how you managed to insert GMOs in this list.

rrobukef• 9 years ago

The wonders of our consumerism. The golden age of pesticides, air, ground and water pollution. The golden age of MacDonald, KFC and Coca-cola and of super-size meals.

Maybe we should listen to the scientists when they say something is bad.

LoSboccacc2• 9 years ago

Meanwhile Europeans are working older, to the same effect. The boomers enjoyed a nice work life balance across the classes for the first time in human history, but the ruling class managed to get us back in our place.

mbroncano• 9 years ago

Other than the classical whataboutism, it's blatantly not true. US is mostly a developing country regarding most social and health standards, from general health to lifespan.

LoSboccacc2• 9 years ago

you mean it's lagging behind most indicators from other comparable countries, including equality index, healthcare quality and average lifespan.

dsego• 9 years ago

We are back where we were at the beginning of the 20th century.

ptaipale5• 9 years ago

We most certainly are not. We are really, really far away from it. Beginning of the 20th century was a time when Europe had high child mortality, utilized lots of child labour, pretty non-existing retirement benefits except for a very narrow elite, and abysmal maternal and hospital care. "Spanish disease" (in this case, the bird flu) wpied out hundreds of thousands of people at end of WW I. And even outside wars, violence was much more commonplace than today.

Sorry, I must say it's outrageously ignorant to say what you say.

Incidentally, I just wrote about early 20th century in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966404

When Bismarck introduced the old-age pension system in Germany in late 1800's, the retirement age was 70 years. Life expectancy in these parts of Germany was 67 years.

As to the OP article, it seems that surprisingly few people have read this:

There’s no simple answer for why longevity gains are slowing. For years, economists and public health experts have been trying to ascertain what’s behind America’s troubling death trends, among them a rise in death rates for certain demographic groups. A much-discussed 2015 paper suggested that mortality was rising for middle-aged white Americans, citing suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol, collectively sometimes referred to as “deaths of despair.” Women have been particularly affected.

What America then is seeing is not that old people, retirees, would die younger. It is seeing working-age people (not necessarily working people) die of unnatural causes.

holtalanm3• 9 years ago

This kind of reads a little like sensationalist journalism, imo.

Seems to me that our technology may actually just be hitting a wall in regards to life expectancy.

That, and the proliferation of sugar in our every-day diets has long-term consequences (who knew? /s)

sharemywin2• 9 years ago

It's culture not technology:

"The USA has the highest child and maternal mortality, homicide rate, and body-mass index of any high-income country, and was the first of high-income countries to experience a halt or possibly reversal of increase in height in adulthood, which is associated with higher longevity," wrote the study authors.

http://fortune.com/2017/02/23/us-life-expectancy-projections...

dx034• 9 years ago

The maternal deaths statistic is not that straightforward. The Economist just had an article about this [1]. It appears that differences in measurements can explain that higher risk.

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21725832-questi...

cfontes3• 9 years ago

Seems to me that our technology may actually just be hitting a wall in regards to life expectancy.

^ | This is probably happening there has to be a limit, also after 80 things get bad really fast, who didn't have a relative doing great then suddenly getting ill and dying in less than a year at those ages

richmarr4• 9 years ago

Seems to me that our technology...

Life expectancy has continued to rise in other countries. The US is lagging behind.

I'd guess the most likely cause is some combination of diet and having the comparatively expensive healthcare.

holtalanm3• 9 years ago

That, and the proliferation of sugar in our every-day diets has long-term consequences (who knew? /s)

This is pretty good guess for the reason for us lagging behind other countries.

kartan2• 9 years ago

Seems to me that our technology may actually just be hitting a wall in regards to life expectancy.

"Americans Are Dying Younger". That will mean that the wall is moving making technology less useful to keep life expectancy. And this is not true.

If we can do more to keep people, not just alive, but healthy. We should do it. Even if there are people that don't see it that way: Fox News host laughs at Democrats saying thousands will die under Trump healthcare bill: 'We're all gonna die'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics...

holtalanm3• 9 years ago

Let me explain.

I meant that there is only so much that technology can do. That, combined with bad eating habits in general, have a compounding effect on the mortality rate, especially at ages 70+ when heart attack risks are at their highest.

maaaats2• 9 years ago

How does the pension system in USA work? Do the companies pay you a small salary after you retire? It reads like that. In that case, what about the place you worked until you were 40, are they still on the hook? What if the company closes down?

toomuchtodo4• 9 years ago

Most pension systems have been phased out. The ones that remain are grandfathered in favor of 401ks for new workers. If existing corporate pension systems default, the US government guarantees (through the Pension Guarantee Corp) the pension at a reduced rate.

cm20122• 9 years ago

Very few companies offer pensions now - mostly the government.

chrisseaton8• 9 years ago

Very few companies offer pensions now

All professional jobs offer pensions, I'm sure. Including all the major tech companies.

theBobBob• 9 years ago

Aren't they normally differentiated as Defined Benefit pensions vs Defined Contribution pensions.

maxerickson3• 9 years ago

It varies. A lot of places have moved away from pensions towards contributions to tax advantaged retirement accounts.

In the case of pensions, they will vest over time and people would receive benefits matching their vesting level. If a company shuts down, the pensioners are creditors of the company and there is some kind of bailout system (I guess basically a federally run reinsurance program).

mcv• 9 years ago

Wait, their pensions depend on the health of all the companies they once worked for, rather than some independent insurance company? That sounds like a really unreliable way of handling things.

logfromblammo• 9 years ago

The pension system in the US has gone down the ratholes. About the only people now entering the workforce that can get them any more are government (mainly municipal) employees and railroad workers.

The larger employers have moved from employer-managed defined-benefit pension plans to employee-managed defined-contribution pension plans, usually named for the section of tax code that describes the characteristics of the plan.

With defined-contribution plans, while you are working, your employer has the option of paying some money into your retirement account, which has various discouragements against early withdrawals. When you stop working, they stop paying. But you still control the account. With pension plans, the company sets money aside for future pension obligations, and may occasionally get audited by a regulator to ensure that the money is still there and adequate to pay out future benefits under certain assumptions that might not necessarily be true.

But the promised benefits of each pension plan are different, selected by the company (or muni-corp) that offered them. There was always a perpetuity (until death), and there might have also been benefits for surviving widow(er)s and minor children. Various health care benefits might have been attached, but probably not, as most retirees would probably go to Medicare.

The employee-managed accounts are seen as preferable to the older pension system, because some companies chose to use the employee pension fund to leverage their other investments or embezzle outright, and thus reneged upon their promises to retirees, who were forced to fall back on government-run pension insurance and Social Security.

Even now, the pension funds for municipal employees are at risk in towns that overpromised benefits to attract their employees, and are now going bankrupt because of it. What do you do if you are forced to either take a permanent haircut on your pension payments, or live somewhere that cannot afford to hire a firefighter? In short, I think it very likely that every remaining pension plan in the US is based on accounting that simply does not compute. At some point in your career, you discover that someone was lying to you and cheating you, and by then it's usually too late.

With the 401(k) plans, at least you know you're getting screwed out of your retirement as you're still working.

bluGill6• 9 years ago

Defined benefit plans are often required to invest in investments with a terrible return.

sharemywin2• 9 years ago

But our healthcare is the best in the world...at least I pay like it is...

richmarr4• 9 years ago

US healthcare is far lower value for money than other developed nations, at least using average life expectancy as the metric:

http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...

moduspol2• 9 years ago

Life expectancy is a terrible measure for quality of health care. The best health care in the world won't change how much overeating and a sedentary lifestyle contribute to heart disease (the #1 cause of death in the US), stroke (#5), and diabetes (#7).

Life expectancy can vary dramatically by county, even when there are no differences at all in health care policy. [1]

That's not to say we aren't paying too much and getting too little. We are. It's just life expectancy isn't the way to measure it.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/who-lives-longer-s...

bmc7505• 9 years ago

But wait, there's good news: If you don't die quickly enough, they'll help!

Taking too long to die: Some 'terminal' patients can lose hospice benefits: http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2017/07/28/too-long-die...

yardie2• 9 years ago

Yes, it makes sense. Hospice is for end of life care. They literally pump you full of pain medication as it is more humane than dying in agony. If your condition is not continually getting worse while under hospice and there is a chance you are getting better than you should be under a different treatment.

Hospice is not healthcare it is where you go to die.

buserror2• 9 years ago

I've been saying that for years. Here in europe, the reason the life expectancy is high is that it's based on people who die today at ripe old age, many of them having been retired 30 years, sometimes more... They are 85+, and they drag the mean age of death thru the roof.

When THAT lucky generation is gone, I think statisticians will realise that their children are /nowhere/ near as lucky, and I'm pretty sure the life expectancy number will fall off a cliff.

I don't have anything to back it up mind you, but raising the age of retirement, more stress related to job stability, whatever, you name it; it's just empirical but I've seen a lot of people in my environment die in their 60's -- many of them who had a perfectly 'sane' way of life. I know what you are thinking, many more people will die at 60 then will die at 90, but I'm still pretty sure there's some underlying pattern here.

Also, I do have a vague impression that making access to the NHS more difficult PLUS raising age of retirement EQUAL MOAR PROFITS for someone, somewhere.

georgeecollins2• 9 years ago

Are you sure retiring early leads to a long life expectancy? I would expect the opposite. My father still works and he is very healthy for an 88 year old. Anecdote is not data, but people in my family seem to stay healthy by working or staying very active.

I think part of the point is to find a avocation that is not stressful, you enjoy, and can do a long time. That may be worth more than money.

buserror2• 9 years ago

I didn't say inactive, I just said retired. I agree than people who 'stop' will tend to die of boredom. I've got a prime example in my family at the moment. I've also got the other side of the coin where that chap is nearly 90, is on several councils, charities and never seem to sit around for 2 minutes. He's as strong as an ox!

graphitezepp2• 9 years ago

I suspect retirement and age expectancy is a correlation NOT causation type of deal. People who have the privilege of affording to retire early are more likely to be educated and chose a healthy lifestyle, thus living longer.

kartan2• 9 years ago

My father still works and he is very healthy for an 88 year old.

This is usually related to the kind of job you are doing.

My mother was cleaning schools and that is a killer for the back. Being retired, she takes long walks and keeps herself active and healthy.

But when I was studying I saw quite old teachers still active, and happy. But that's a different kind of job with different effects on your health.

I think part of the point is to find a [a]vocation that is not stressful, you enjoy, and can do a long time.

I agree. If you are lucky enough to get a job that fulfills you, then continuing working can be a good thing. That's why we can't just delay retirement age, but we need to take into account personal circumstances.

A not stressful and enjoyable work also helps you to keep your good health for longer, so you get in better shape to old age.

EADGBE4• 9 years ago

The general consensus is that you're correct.

Mostly dealing with octogenarians+ whom I know; the more active you are (more so socially, as well as physically) the better off you are at living a long and healthy life. Having a routine like a job sets also seems to help human psyche. Your point about vocation that is not stressful, enjoyable, and is lasting satisfies all these requirements.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3563954/Retirement...

http://fortune.com/2016/05/03/retirement-living-longer/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/02/early-e...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/retiring-after-65-may-help-peop...

That's from both sides of the pond.

babuskov• 9 years ago

It seems like a positive feedback loop to me. You would expect healthy people to be able and willing to keep working instead of retiring. Esp. if their work involves some physical activity it helps keeping them healthy.

denom• 9 years ago

Economics is not a monolith of wages and taxes. In a family there are many householding activities where retirees can contribute to the economic health of society.

Retirement should be a focus for these types of activities. Things like tending a small garden, or playing with grandchildren.

eksemplar4• 9 years ago

Working with your mind in a stress free environment will make you old. Mining coal, crawling around in asbestos, being pushed by a never ending competition or sitting still doing nothing won't.

So there are upsides and down sides to work/retirement thing. The best you can do is academia or a retirement spent learning new things.

gambiting• 9 years ago

Yeah, again, anecdota is not data, but I knew a few people who fully retired after just 15 years of work(in Poland certain professions are allowed to retire that quickly with full benefits, that includes policemen,firefighters and miners) and they all died before reaching 60, having only worked until the age of 33-35.

gozur889• 9 years ago

This may just be selection bias. Had your father died at age 70, you'd be thinking the reason was he didn't retire early enough.

My dad retired at 55 as his health began to decline. He's still alive at 78, and there's no way he would have lived this long if he didn't retire when he did.

ColanR• 9 years ago

I've actually heard the opposite - that people can tend to die within a year of retirement, generally because they don't have anything purposeful left to do.

user5994461• 9 years ago

I'd assume the increased life expectancy is more about the free healthcare than the earlier retirement.

Free treatment for everything. That does help a lot when you get old, starting with all the minor problems happening with an aging body, and concluding with the last few years where you could literally be kept alive despite a critical condition requiring constant care, all paid in full by the tax payer.

harryf• 9 years ago

You might be on to something...

https://www.ft.com/content/78146114-15f5-11e7-80f4-13e067d50...

Updated projections from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, based on death statistics from the Office for National Statistics, suggest that men aged 65 will now live another 22.2 years, down from 22.8 years in 2013. Women aged 65 will now live for a further 24.1 years, down from 25.1 years in 2013.

(Same reported also cited here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pensioners-uk... )

The analysis seems to focus on first order changes, not longer term second order changes so if there was an effect like you describe e.g. those born 80 years ago being much healthier than those born 60 years ago, their positive contribution might mask deeper problems.

The UK's ONA publishes various mortality related data sets here - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... - might be an interesting side project for someone with time to spare...

walterstucco5• 9 years ago

Financial Times = UK = NOT Europe

gargs• 9 years ago

By definition, life expectancy increases with age as a trend owing to better postnatal care over the past few decades. As the infant mortality rate has gone down, the life expectancy has gone up.

albertgoeswoof4• 9 years ago

it's more than just postnatal care - better treatments, better diets, more public health knowledge etc. make a huge difference

Bartweiss2• 9 years ago

Post-infancy life expectancy and life expectancy at adulthood have also both risen, though. Until recently, adult life expectancy in the first world was rising pretty steadily for all groups - it's turned around for some populations in the last few years.

stevenwoo• 9 years ago

Infant mortality has started going up in parts of the USA. There might be some connection with the conservative approach to defund women's healthcare as some sort of cost savings.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Why-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/07/rural...

walterstucco5• 9 years ago

and I'm pretty sure the life expectancy number will fall off a cliff.

What?

With no wars, no shortage of food, with all the advancement in health care do you really expect to live less than my grandma, who's 94 and outlived three major world financial crisis and a world war?

cJ0th• 9 years ago

with all the advancement in health care

Some experts fear we might loose (some) antibiotics in the coming years. If that's going to happen then I am sure life expectancy will go down massively.

paulcole• 9 years ago

do you really expect to live less than my grandma, who's 94

Yes I do. Your grandmother had a life expectancy of 58.5 years.

Source: http://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html

LordKano• 9 years ago

With no wars, no shortage of food

One of the great ironies is how the abundance of food in the west is leading to obesity, heart disease and high blood pressure. Instead of people being unhealthy due to chronic, persistent malnutrition, people are unhealthy from carrying too much body fat.

Last I heard, nearly half of all Americans were overweight or obese. Have you ever noticed how few fat old people there are?

davidreiss• 9 years ago

When THAT lucky generation is gone, I think statisticians will realise that their children are /nowhere/ near as lucky, and I'm pretty sure the life expectancy number will fall off a cliff.

Much of the developed world is having a population crisis. When pensions/government benefits were created in the early 20th century in the US, western europe and japan, they were experiencing population booms.

Take japan for example, which is similar to US/Western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bdrates_of_Japan_since_19...

Japan seems to have maxed out and now they are dying quicker than they are being born.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Po...

This is the same problem in most western europe countries. In the US, it's not as bad because of immigration, but if you only include native born americans ( non-immigrants ), our population demographics is even worse than japan. Native born americans stopped procreating at replacement levels since the late 1960s.

Unless Japan/Western Europe bring in millions of immigrants, they are going to be in for major problems because of their liabilities to retirees. A shrinking population can't hope to support the older generation. And the worst part is that if younger generation has to support the older generation, they will put off have kids because they simply can't afford them. Which in turn exacerbates the problem and it turns into a vicious cycle.

But immigration also has its own problems. So the industrialized world is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Even in the US, the pro-immigration policy is a stop-gap measure. The population can't grow forever.

Blackrock has an interesting paper on the overall trends.

https://www.blackrock.com/investing/retirement/blackrock-ret...

wott2• 9 years ago

A shrinking population can't hope to support the older generation.

Yes it can, it's just a matter of productivity.

ajross2• 9 years ago

This isn't a "crisis". Existing entitlement benefits are too high for the coming steady-state economy, but by like 30% or so. Adjustments will have to be made (e.g. some made-up numbers: we can work 10% longer careers, take 10% lower benefits, and expect a 10% boost in general productivity over this period), but we're hardly talking destitution or social upheaval here.

Retirees in the 2040's are going to see less resources-per-GDP dedicated to them than retirees in the 1980's for sure. But then they'll also have pervasive VR headsets and a plausible cure for cancer handy, so I'm guessing it'll be a wash.

cageface• 9 years ago

A lot of it has to to with the increasingly unhealthy diet people are eating now, at least in the US. I imagine Europe is similar.

flexie• 9 years ago

I expect the opposite.

Manufacturing, farming, fishing, etc were much more common industries for those who are now 85 than it is for those who are now 55.

There is a huge difference between retiring from manual labor at 60 after having worked from you were 15 and retirering from a desk job at 65 after having worked from you were 25.

Then take into account that they used to work Saturdays, that they used to work more hours per day, that fewer had recognized disabilities, that fewer received welfare, that they had much less vacation, that women had more pregnancies and that those of them that worked had shorter maternity leave.

The 'lucky' old had worked more and physically harder at 60 than we will have at 70.

abledon4• 9 years ago

Lifetime of Manual labour keeps your body fit , desk job... not so much.

lkrubner2• 9 years ago

Everything you say is true except for "that they had much less vacation" -- in truth, they had much more vacation. The average American male now works 270 hours more per year than the average American male of 1970.

A useful (though old) book on this subject:

The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure – by Juliet Schor

DiNovi• 9 years ago

I think it's dangerous to be led by your assumptions

Fnoord2• 9 years ago

Here in europe, the reason the life expectancy is high is that it's based on people who die today at ripe old age, many of them having been retired 30 years, sometimes more... They are 85+, and they drag the mean age of death thru the roof.

30 years? I suspect you are overdramatizing that.

AFAIK people stop working at age 65 in Europe (its 67 in NL, was 65, and it was raised because of higher life expectancy). I think in Germany its higher. In Greece it was 55 IIRC, and that was one of the reasons of the crisis, but Greece was an outlier (and AFAIK they're raising it).

If we assume its 65 it still isn't as if people are becoming 95 on average.

So you need 2 points of data, and they contradict with my anecdotal evidence from my EU country.

Please provide your sources?

I don't have anything to back it up mind you

Maybe we should start the debate once we do have the data.

ptaipale5• 9 years ago

The data:

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-65.htm

In most well-developed countries, life expectancy of women at 65 is around 22 remaining years. I.e. once you have reached the age of 65, on the average you live until the age of 87, give or take a couple of years depending on country. Longest lives in Japan and France.

So depending on retirement age, people spend well over 20 years in retirement on average, but as the previous commenter said, many of them will be in retirement for 30 years.

hardtke• 9 years ago

There is a growing gap in life expectancy based on income, and many of the people collecting private pensions qualify as upper income. I doubt that companies will get much of break once that is factored in.

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

Generally deaths at all ages are tracked and considered in the life expectancy. There was a website posted here where you could enter your age and location and it would tell you how much longer you had to live :-) (yes it was click bait but it also had a great discussion about how life expectancy was calculated and how the number varied primarily by age, location, and socio-economic status. Other factors such as smoking or not had a big impact the effects on the median value quickly tailed off.

vilmosi• 9 years ago

Also, I do have a vague impression that making access to the NHS more difficult PLUS raising age of retirement EQUAL MOAR PROFITS for someone, somewhere.

In the case of NHS, wouldn't that be the tax payer?

T-hawk• 9 years ago

Be careful about selection bias in your empirical data.

Suppose you're 50. You probably know more people 10 years away from your own age than 40. So no surprise you see more people die at 60 than at 90, because you know more at 60 in the first place.

And of course there's always a survivorship bias in life expectancy numbers. Life expectancy for a currently-living baby-boomer is over 80, because the boomers who die under 70 are already dead and no longer pulling down the average.

solnyshok• 9 years ago

they call it "savings" at the state treasury

SamBoogieNYC• 9 years ago

This headline is mindbogglingly dystopic and crass

baursak• 9 years ago

The bright neoliberal future is here!

galactus• 9 years ago

Finally, some good news! /s

johan_larson2• 9 years ago

Buy every retiree a high-performance motor cycle. They'll have some fun, and when they die you won't need expensive end-of-life care; you'll just need a mop and a body-bag. It'll save billions.

bkovacev• 9 years ago

That was a bit too graphical for my lunch to handle, thanks :D

thieving_magpie• 9 years ago

"I love the movies, love ‘em. Now, I’m watching Terminator 2 the other day, and I’m thinking to myself: They cannot top the stunts in this film, they cannot top this shit, unless … they start using terminally ill people as stunt people in feature films … well, hear me out, ’cause I know to a lot of you this may seem a little cruel. “Aww, Bill, terminally ill stunt people? That’s cruel!” You know what I think’s cruel? Leaving your loved ones to die in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Fuck that! Put ‘em in the movies! What, you wanna let your grandmother live out her last days in a sterile hospital room, with translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins? Or do you want her to meet… Chuck Norris?

Hey, how come you dressed my grandmother up as a mugger? Shut up and get off the set. Action! Push her towards Chuck! (Karate noises) Wow, he kicked her head right off her body! Did you see that? Did you see my Grammy? She's out of her misery, you've seen the greatest film of all time!"

- bill hicks

EADGBE4• 9 years ago

Not really, assuming every gets a $15,000 bike. it's about $20b more than we spent last year on Medicare.

But, It really depends on the bike you're suggesting. Supply and demand for 46.2M units will surely raise the price as well.

46.2M Americans over the age of 65 (retirement age) * $15,000 a bike (conservative, since we're talking "high-performance motor cycle") = $693B.

http://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-medicar...

djrogers3• 9 years ago

a $15,000 bike

That's a really high price for a bike, you're talking a small percentage top of the line or stupid over-priced for name brand sake bikes there. Kinda feels like you might have backed in to that number?

For reference, a bike like a GSXR 600 or Ducati Monster can be had for under $10k - and one would assume a decent discount for buying a few million at a time ;-)

Bartweiss2• 9 years ago

It is an amortized cost. The NYT claims Medicare costs the government roughly $6,000/person/year. So the question is whether the motorcycles reduce an average of 3 years of life per person. (Ignoring price shocks from giving them out.)

But... 2015 data says ~5,000 cyclists died out of a total population of 8,600,000, making for .05% of cyclists dying per year. Assuming a grant at 65 and a life expectancy of 85, that's an average of .01 years of life lost in the first year. (And this assumes everyone rides them as much as people who choose to buy motorcycles!) The years lost decline as people age, of course, but even raw multiplication only gets us an average of .2 years of life lost per person over the course of the project.

Obviously this doesn't adjust for varying risk profiles compared to normal motorcycle riders, but we'd be talking about being more than 15 times as likely to die as most motorcyclists to make this math add up.

All moral issues aside, it looks like the math just doesn't back this one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/upshot/medicaid-gives-the...

http://www.iii.org/issue-update/motorcycle-crashes

edit: taking bike price down to $8k doesn't really change this logic, especially given the "not actually riding" issue I didn't factor in.

mousa• 9 years ago

You don't get a new bike every year. You're talking about a 1 time payment for all 65+. After that just give it to everyone who turns 65.

twoquestions3• 9 years ago

Now I'm imagining our economy like some cruel volcano god, demanding blood in exchange for temporary safety. "People's lives are getting worse, look how much money that's making us!"

It's as if people exist only to make money, actually making people's lives better be damned. I doubt people will tolerate such a vampiric system for much longer, especially if it doesn't feel the need to conceal it's fangs anymore, and what comes afterward keeps me up at night.

briantakita4• 9 years ago

Now I'm imagining our economy like some cruel volcano god

Similar to how the Aztec Gods demanded blood sacrifices, from the best & the brightest of the population.

reducesuffering• 9 years ago

Source? I believe Aztec sacrifices were almost always prisoners of war from conquered tribes.

jrimbault• 9 years ago

Yesterday I heard on the tv or radio I heard the metric "€/vote" as if a vote was product.

problems• 9 years ago

Probably trying to generate something similar to the "cost per conversion" numbers used in advertising. Nothing particularly nefarious about it.

jorvi• 9 years ago

I read on another HN thread that the top 25% pays 90% of taxes. Made me grok why governments will never really care about the poor pretty clearly.

It's harsh, but for cities or even countries the bottom xx% is a net drain.

walterstucco5• 9 years ago

it is, but in a slightly different way: I know that in Italy every vote equals something like 4 euros from public funds to the party I gave it to.

So if I want to help that party to continue going on by voting it it is the same than giving them ~4 euros (money that come from my taxes).

Nothing different from crowdfunding, but public.

What's the problem?

pillowkusis• 9 years ago

Your comparison to "the economy" as some dark being that demands sacrifice has been explored more deeply. It's a good read on why obviously terrible outcomes still happen even though we know it's bad.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

twoquestions3• 9 years ago

Not too proud to admit that essay directly inspired my comment, I just wanted to be more concise than SSC (which the opposite of difficult).

rnabel• 9 years ago

This is a good point - what strikes me about these arguments, however, is that the biggest problem (IMHO) stems from the fact that the economy often relies on local optimization, not global optimization.

If we optimized human life quality globally everyone would get better healthcare etc., but since everyone makes the decisions that benefit them (+family and immediate surrounding), then we end up with worse healthcare for the vast majority of the population.

As such, it should probably be the job of governments (regulation, incentives) to make 'globally' optimized decisions more attractive (centralized healthcare). In a best case scenario at least.

twoquestions3• 9 years ago

That's the theory, it's just that a lot of people frankly have their heads too far up their asses to see how a global optimization is better than the local one.

I don't care to be this coarse, but I've been trying for 10 minutes to find a better way of putting it.

WalterSear• 9 years ago

That cruel volcano god is the hive mind of a handful of people making their personal lives better.

pm903• 9 years ago

The problem is just that we as a society have never had to plan for such a large proportion of our society being older and thus outside the (regular?) labor force. We created social security nets but they look increasingly like a ponzi scheme, making lots of young pay for the care of the old (in addition to contributions made by the old when they were a part of the labor force). Is this sustainable? I don't know.

BuckRogers2• 9 years ago

It is sustainable if you manage it properly and don't rob the collection plate. Insurance is predicated on the same ponzi scheme, just usually private market based. Some insurance exec couldn't be embezzling millions and still have the numbers work out.

I'd say it comes down to good management (as with anything) and priorities. A bad government is going to mismanage it and spend more on the military or other priorities, borrow money to make up the deficits and then of course everyone loses faith.

lkrubner2• 9 years ago

As John Maynard Keynes said, the surprising thing is how long a stagnant or exploitive system can last. Such systems can last for centuries.

rb808• 9 years ago

That is a cynical view. Trying to forecast the cost of pension obligations is a real problem that has very real costs to companies, and can send companies bankrupt. The article shows that changing life expectancies mean a change of nearly $10B to estimated costs for just two companies. You can't run people's lives and companies based on hand-waving and assuming it'll be alright.

OTOH maybe that is why our vending machine is full of unhealthy snacks. :)

+ I have to add problems like these is why companies now give 401ks to employees. Whether you live long or not now is the person's problem and the risk is no longer borne by the company.

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

Another cynical view is that it's a febrile fantasy to put all of your retirement eggs in the basket of an organization continuing to pay you over your entire lifetime.

HD134606c• 9 years ago

Just go for a drive through Los Gatos or Los Altos to know where all the blood and sweat is going. Even just look them up on Zillow with some unusual filters.

Mahn• 9 years ago

I have this theory that in a couple decades or three most of the developed world will enter a health crisis, as everyone will suddenly realize that we've been eating and drinking like shit for a long time. Almost 3/4 of what you can find in your average grocery store today has unnecessary amounts of sugar, salt and/or chemicals added and no one seems to care. Someday we'll look at the food we eat now like the way we see tobacco today.

wmccullough• 9 years ago

and no one seems to care

I'd have to disagree with that. There are lots of people who care and have tried to be good stewards to the public. The problem is that you also have corporations with major amounts of cash and influence that actively discredit anyone who speaks out. These are facts.

For example, whether or not GMO issues are horseshit or not doesn't matter when anyone who speaks out is given a gag order or when we find leaked documents showing that companies know of damage and our systems are so fucked we aren't even allowed to ask about it without getting sued into oblivion.

People care, but caring isn't enough anymore.

18nleung• 9 years ago

Could you elaborate? I myself haven't seen much compelling evidence against GMOs.

coldtea8• 9 years ago

For example, whether or not GMO issues are horseshit or not doesn't matter when anyone who speaks out is given a gag order or when we find leaked documents showing that companies know of damage and our systems are so fucked we aren't even allowed to ask about it without getting sued into oblivion.

And my favorite group, the ones confusing technology with science, and insisting that GMOs must be perfectly safe, "because science" -- when most of the research and assurances is from companies looking for a quick buck, not impartial scientists (which almost don't exist anymore the way they did when academic/research jobs where plenty, scientists were often independently wealthy, and tenure a sure thing).

loeg6• 9 years ago

we find leaked documents showing that companies know of damage

Do you have any specific examples of damage from GMOs?

Shorel• 9 years ago

Most people care, but the general advice is not good.

Low fat food is not really healthy.

kthejoker2• 9 years ago

That's not the general advice though?

Eat natural foods, eat less of them, avoid sugar.

https://youtu.be/BOyebcrVWb4

0x4f3759df• 9 years ago

The documentary 'Fed Up' convinced me that a sugar calorie is worse than another type of calorie, and that sugar is really the cause of the obesity epidemic. There's also 'That Sugar Film' which makes many of the same points.

Fed Up Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCUbvOwwfWM

martinko• 9 years ago

Fed up is filled with horrible vegan propaganda

walterstucco5• 9 years ago

I have this theory than in a couple decades or three most of the developed world will enter a health crisis

you need more than that for a theory of a dystopian future

telling us how much you feel bad for eating too much is not a theory

it's a therapy session

nbates803• 9 years ago

I hardly eat sugar or preprocessed food. But the biggest improvement in lifestyle was cutting wheat flour as much as possible. The first change I noticed was the weight loss, but I feel less "stuffy" too. I replaced it with corn flour.

Other than that, I really think there is some truth to the documentary Cooked. I don't deprive myself from food, as long as it is homemade food out of real ingredients. I can't afford organic food and the weather of the place I live in is not that great to grow my own food (and my time availability is not that much either).

adamnemecek• 9 years ago

You don't even really need flower.

the_cat_kittles3• 9 years ago

so you knew sugar caused diabetes? ...yea

and you knew it caused obesity? ...yea

so you knew it was literally killing you? ...yea

and you kept eating it anyway? ......sigh......yea.

wavefunction2• 9 years ago

There's sugar in everything. It's pretty difficult to avoid unless you're willing to take drastic measures when compared to the average person.

All you can do is attempt to minimize your intake.

madamelic• 9 years ago

The issue isn't X, it is the quantity.

Eating a Twinkie won't kill you, eating an entire box every day for 20 years will.

abawany2• 9 years ago

I agree that there is significant willing suspension of disbelief. However, there are two additional factors that make it difficult to completely pin the tail on the donkey that is the hapless consumer: 1) Sugar in unexpected ingredients (I still can't believe McDonalds hamburger buns have HFCS and I learnt this in 2010), and 2) Terminology and presentation games to ensure the consumer is less likely to read the ingredients list and nutrition facts.

EDIT: syntax. Also, forgot to mention food deserts and availability of fresh produce in various neighborhoods.

rdiddly• 9 years ago

So we've reached Peak Human?

trentnix• 9 years ago

The list of municipal and state governments that are trending towards bankruptcy due to underfunded pensions is longer than a rich kid's Christmas list. A shortening life expectancy benefits them most.

That's the news here, if there is any.

gthtjtkt• 9 years ago

Reminds me of this article from The Atlantic last year:

For the last several months, social scientists have been debating the striking findings of a study by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. Between 1998 and 2013, Case and Deaton argue, white Americans across multiple age groups experienced large spikes in suicide and fatalities related to alcohol and drug abuse—spikes that were so large that, for whites aged 45 to 54, they overwhelmed the dependable modern trend of steadily improving life expectancy. While critics have challenged the magnitude and timing of the rise in middle-age deaths (particularly for men), they and the study’s authors alike seem to agree on some basic points: Problems of mental health and addiction have taken a terrible toll on whites in America—though seemingly not in other wealthy nations—and the least educated among them have fared the worst.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-w...

MentallyRetired• 9 years ago

People still get pensions?

albertgoeswoof4• 9 years ago

It's difficult to predict mortality rates. Advanced healthcare techniques (e.g. CRISPR) could completely eradicate entire classes of diseases (kind of like how anti-biotics and vaccinations changed healthcare completely), or they could lead to nothing.

So we might find that the average age of death jumps up by 20+ years in the next 50-60 years (just like it did after WW2).

Nuclear war aside we almost certainly won't see a drop in the average age.

nbates803• 9 years ago

The problem is the cost of those techniques. Will it be low enough so that it has an impact on the average (or even better, the median) life expectancy?

albertgoeswoof4• 9 years ago

Probably, vaccines were very expensive when first produced, as were anti-biotics.

Given we are potentially entering the age of unlimited power (i.e. via solar/battery tech), we should be able to grow ever more food. Combined with global population growth declining we will see basic quality of life becoming almost gauranteed universally. Then we'll have more and more people + AI working on advancing tech (as they don't have to work on manual things) so production costs should drop dramatically.

bluGill6• 9 years ago

Genetic high cholesterol can easily cost more than $100k in costs over a life time, even assuming that treatment is successful in averting a heart attack. A one time $100k treatment to fix the gene is already break even. That is before we discuss the side effects avoiding them is worth quite a bit to a lot of people as well.

tomjen3• 9 years ago

If it matters much on the scale, it will be included in all health plans - politicians can't vote for the "Kill grandma" bill.

sddfd• 9 years ago

The absurdity is that life insurance/pension companies assume live expectancy is actually rising.

The company providing my pension fund estimates my life expectancy to 114 years - a fantasy number, albeit one that /increases/ my monthly payment and /decreases/ my expected pension.

sloppycee• 9 years ago

How is that even legal? It's such a blatant rip off.

Are you not able to switch providers?

lr4444lr• 9 years ago

Another reason why term coverage, not whole life/universal, is a better choice.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

purely anecdotal, but when my Doctor tells me he cannot tell fat people to diet because bad surveys affect the reviews of Doctors and their hospital; surveys from both government and insurance companies; it should be a clear indicator we are doing something wrong. He cannot connect their diabetes to their weight, only suggest what foods would help manage their diabetes without crossing the line into mentioning weight management.

what are people's actual expectations for how long they should or can live? I am at the age where I am not seeing relatives who I grew up learning from passing on, I am even having coworkers pass on. Perhaps I notice it more when people younger than I go.

woobar• 9 years ago

Interesting. I was never asked to do any reviews of my doctors or other healthcare providers.

As for your second question, I semi-jokingly tell my kids that my consciousness will be uploaded to the cloud and I will be posting dad jokes to their twitter long after I am dead. Just need to make sure I pay for hosting in advance.

nradov• 9 years ago

Research has shown that patient satisfaction surveys have approximately zero correlation with care quality or adherence to medical best practices. Consumer directed healthcare has some disadvantages.

Chardok• 9 years ago

Its not hard to see why exactly Americans are dying younger. Hell, just look at the headline here.

When you have increased wealth concentration flowing upwards and more involvement of profit machines in people's lives (healthcare, correctional facilities, food, environment), people on average are working harder for less pay with increased cost of living. This means less recreational time to blow stress off, less time for doctor visits (not to mention the fun games our federal government is playing with healthcare), and less time/money/emphasis to treat yourself spiritually/psychologically. I am hardly surprised this equates to higher mortality rates.

America has a huge problem spending money on the betterment of its citizens, and it is starting to show.

GhostVII• 9 years ago

Its not hard to see why exactly Americans are dying younger

American's aren't dying younger, life expectancies are still increasing... The headline is a lie.

chrshawkes• 9 years ago

Yep, not dying as young, just not growing life expectancy year over year as fast this past decade.

The title of this article, just like most things in our modern media, are a complete fabrication of the truth.

jorblumesea• 9 years ago

Personal opinion: Life expectancy gains will actually reverse over the new 20 years, given how little is being done to combat extremely poor health choices many Americans make.

Then it will skyrocket due to medical innovations like CRISPR.

miheermunjal• 9 years ago

wonder how the influx of "corporate wellness" plans affect this. It seems more and more that your lifestyle can be adjusted/improved via your workplace rather than personal drive.

Could that be an input into insurance? potentially...

justforFranz2• 9 years ago

Always nice to see a perverse incentive. But thankfully, in America we work for corporations, not the other way around.

ionised2• 9 years ago

I'm trying to understand what this comment means.

joosters• 9 years ago

I don't get it. The article does not say that life expectancies are decreasing. It says that they are still increasing, just not as fast as they were a few years ago. But the article (and most of the comments) seem to think it means that people are dying younger. That's not what the data is saying.

albertgoeswoof4• 9 years ago

our media is a wonderful thing

mathattack• 9 years ago

Looking at the chart, it seems like they're reading an awful lot into 1 or 2 data points. It's very noisy data.

diyseguy• 9 years ago

cue sardonic grin

(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-brief-aug-09/)

Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions

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