Americans spend more years being unhealthy than people in any other country

https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/americans-are-living-longer-but-most-of-the-extra-time-is-spent-being-sick/

by m463 • 2 years ago

27 35 2 years ago

marinmania2• 2 years ago

The news is perhaps not shocking given the relatively poor quality of health care in the US.

I'm not sure I agree with that? I'd think intuitively the delta between years lived and "health span" would be largest in countries with good health care. The end of the article does allude to this.

While the US presented the most extreme example, the researchers note that the global trends seem to present a "disease paradox whereby reduced acute mortality exposes survivors to an increased burden of chronic disease."

LinuxBender• 2 years ago

I am not an expert but I think it may be more nuanced in my opinion. Fast food started in the US in the 70's. Other nations followed after some time and I do recall seeing a funny chart ... not sure if I can find it tonight but it is an overlay of when people started eating fast food and when there was a dramatic increase of type 2 diabetes. One graph followed the other perfectly. There is a time window offset and I think that's why people have a hard time grasping the cause and effect. Other countries have similar graphs and they have the same time window offset but the graphs map onto each other perfectly with that same time windows offset. It's only gotten worse since then. A bored journalist at Ars should try to find those graphs.

listenallyall2• 2 years ago

Lots of people want to vilify fast food and blame it for any unhealthy trends. But the timing of fast food's emergence correlates with all kinds of other possible triggers - massive increase in availability of snack foods (cookies, Domino's, potato chips) in the home, far more sedentary lives and careers, introduction of plastic 2-liter soda bottles, increased use of seed oils, more sugar-based breakfast food, etc. So it is lazy and biased when you look at a few charts and assume it's all McDonald's fault.

marinmania2• 2 years ago

Fast food causing people to eat badly reflects poorly on US society as a whole, but not sure if it reflects badly on the US healthcare system. Especially if the stats show that the US is good at keeping these people alive.

rayiner7• 2 years ago

It’s like people just say this stuff as a meme. Is healthcare in the U.S. bad? Asian Americans in the U.S. live 84.5 years on average, longer than Singapore, an Asian country with universal healthcare. As far as I can tell Asian Americans have the same healthcare system as at least white Americans. So is the problem the healthcare system?

In Utah, LDS males have a life expectancy of 77.3 versus 70 for non-LDS males. (LDS have higher income but only slightly.) I don’t think there’s any special Mormon healthcare system!

dangus3• 2 years ago

It is objectively bad based on value, and it’s objectively bad on the equality of the care.

US healthcare is great if you’re in the top 50% of earners who have employer-sponsored healthcare and you can keep your job while you go through major care events. People like knowledge workers tend to fit this bill. Doesn’t hurt that they aren’t messing up their back doing construction or something.

Obviously the USA has a ton of excellent care available including some of the top technology, doctors, and hospitals in the world.

It’s not so great if you’re one of the double digit millions of people who have no health insurance at all. It’s not so great if you can’t afford anything except the yearly check-up.

Did you know that over 40% or people who get cancer in America lose their life savings within two years?

chownie• 2 years ago

I mean, there kind of is a special Mormon healthcare system in that they are traditionally forbidden to take part in drug use or to drink alcohol. I would not be super shocked if alcoholism made up some of that seven year gap between non-LDS and LDS males.

_heimdall4• 2 years ago

Having had to take a few different family members to the ER over the last few years, I'd rate their care as pretty bad. If your metric for success is staying alive they did okay, but I can't say much good beyond that.

xenospn2• 2 years ago

Oh it’s very bad. And I say this as someone very healthy (luckily). I grew up in a different country with a functioning healthcare system system, and the US one is horrible.

refurb2• 2 years ago

Precisely.

Average lifespan is a terrible metric for quality of healthcare. There are dozens of confounding factors that can reduce lifespan even in the presence of high quality healthcare.

scary-size2• 2 years ago

A recent podcast I listened to highlighted the US‘ child mortality rate as an indicator for the quality of their health care system.

listenallyall2• 2 years ago

Most people would rather be unhealthy than dead. Seems like this report is a win for America.

smt882• 2 years ago

Life expectancy in the US is lower than other developed countries, so people here are living both shorter and worse lives.

bdangubic• 2 years ago

you should check out life expectancy data in the US - ordered by net worth descending :)

zosima• 2 years ago

The main reason for this, no doubt, is that in most countries with socialized healthcare, doctors are incentivised to not put a diagnosis on the patient, as that is costly.

In the US, with private health care, the incentives are the opposite.

Each has pros and cons, but there is definitely nothing to suggest that this demonstrates worse health care in US.

dangus3• 2 years ago

I think it has to do more with the infrastructure in America. Almost nobody is giving our physically built world credit for our obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

The vast majority of people live in places where they have to live almost their entire lives in their cars.

If you’re in the privileged minority of Americans who live in a walkable pre-automobile city, you’ve probably experienced your friends and family from out of town acting like walking 4 miles a day is a lot.

When they visit they’ll timidly ask about how we are getting to our next destination because the there is anxiety about how to figure out navigating life where not every physical destination involves a car. You’ll have to remind them to bring things like adequate outerwear, hats, raincoats, gloves, because they just let their car handle that for them.

Most of the somewhat bad car-focused cities in other countries still do better than America on this issue. America is the land of the couch on wheels. It literally is Wall-E already.

throaway25012• 2 years ago

it’s the food

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42393837

Americans spend more years being unhealthy than people in any other country

Related Stories