Senate Life Expectancy for White Folks Falls in the U.S.

Well, for poor white folks. Maybe this is the news that will finally turn the tide toward support of health care reforms among the rural/southern white Republican base.

It's hard to stress enough how bad this news is, not only for poor white people, but also for the global reputation of health care in the U.S. Keep in mind, the health care picture has always been pretty bad for poor black people. But now, I think it's clear we have a serious national public health problem.

Here's the bad news:

• sharp decrease in life expectancy for whites lacking a high school diploma
  
• "The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008...The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There's something to be proud of.
  
  "The latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better. "
  
• causes include "rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance." As an aside, the trendline in diabetes and pre-diabetes in the U.S., projected out to 2030 (from a CDC presentation I attended not too long ago), is one of the most frightening graphs I have ever seen.
  
• "The dropping life expectancies have helped weigh down the United States in international life expectancy rankings, particularly for women. In 2010, American women fell to 41st place, down from 14th place in 1985, in the United Nations rankings. Among developed countries, American women sank from the middle of the pack in 1970 to last place in 2010"

"Non-Hispanic whites currently make up 63 percent of the population of the United States."

Granted, these are part of the 47% who don't take responsibility for their lives and feel they're entitled to food. A lot of food. A whole lot of food. And you can see the results. But, let's not forget; they are white. Although on the other hand, it is only women who have been hit hardest. That is one mitigating factor.

 

And yet the USA is ranked second in Health Expenditures, as a % of GDP....

 

26 million with diabetes. 79 million with pre-diabetes.

 

Wow. That is ALL of West Virginia.

Also, interesting to note that the lighter areas match up to major cities for the south. You can see Nashville and Atlanta.

 

Native American reservations pop out too, e.g. northeast Arizona.

 

Most of Louisiana, where fried is a food-group. Color me shocked.

 

I'm glad I was bootstrappin' enough to be born to middle-class, educated parents on the west coast who have no family history of diabetes.

 

It goes without saying, the diabetes map overlaps fairly uniformly with the obesity prevalence map. Colorado has been getting fatter along with the rest of the country, but at a much slower rate.

A third of all Americans diabetic or pre-diabetic by 2050.

As I've argued before, I believe that we can solve our obesity/diabetes/life expectancy crisis simultaneously with our energy crisis.

Free liposuction for all Americans combined with a build-out of electric power plants around the country fueled by human fat.

 

Well, obesity medicine is booming as a field. Guess the good times will keep on er...rolling for physicians who wish to specialize in treating the obese.

Peace,

V-03

 

I just spoke with my 97-yr-old uncle. My grandfathers both lived well into their 90's. My mom lived to 91. No history of diabetes in the family. Don't know why my family is so long-lived, but it's kinda scary.

 

A lot of lifetime healthcare expenditures are spent late in life for age-related problems that crop up because we live so long. It might make economic sense to fatten up poor people so they die sooner. You increase healthcare costs for them in the short term for all the obesity-related health problems, but if they can die 10-15 years sooner, that's more than a decade of late-life healthcare costs saved. If it's a net savings to have fat people die sooner than thin people living longer, letting the poor people get fat and die young may free up even more healthcare resources for the rich.

 

Yeah, a lot of those medical expenditures late in life could be avoided if people had advance health care directives. Hospitals are required to give any and all necessary care, but if the person is very elderly and has no advance care directive, the hospital may be prolonging the life (and medical costs) of someone who would rather have gone the DNR route. It is not uncommon for a senior citizen to have $100,000 worth of medical care in the last 30 days of their life.

 

You could have poor people create living wills in exchange for Mcdonald's and Domino's vouchers.

 

Having fully nationalised healthcare might not make sure a statistic any better, just throwing that out there as someone who is familiar with such a program.

 

Have you not been reading my geentic research posts? We are all gonna live forver. Except maybe some of you older folks.

 

I'm in the beige! Yes!

 

take a system like Germny has- it isnt like nationalised health care but its fees are regulated by gov.