US falls from 11th to 42th in Life Expectancy

[Middle finga]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2147617,00.html

A combination of expensive health insurance and an ever-increasing rate of obesity appear to be behind a startling fall by the US in the world rankings of life expectancy

Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, America has dropped from 11th to 42nd place in 20 years, according to official US figures.

Dr Christopher Murray, head of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said: "Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries."

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The decline reflects the disparity in wealth.The life expectancy of African Americans is 73.3 compared with 77.9 for whites. For African-American males, it is even shorter: 69.8.

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The drop is also due to improved health care, nutrition and lifestyle elsewhere in the world. Countries with longer life expectancy include most of Europe, Japan, Singapore and Jordan.

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The US also has a higher infant mortality rate than many other countries: 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. The worst life expectancy figures are in Africa, with Swaziland at the bottom, at 34.1 years.

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Just another sad example of what happens when you allow the Republicans to control the political debate and set the agenda in this country.

[azurnoir]

1. This is an intended outcome

it is GOP eugenics in action.

[reprobate]

2. I don't think they intend the most likely outcome: revolution, violent revolution.

That's why it's unlikely we will see this story in MSM.

The American people are for the most party uneducated, uninterested, and incurious about what happens in the world around them. While I believe this statement to be true, there will come a time when most people will realize that we have been swindled.

The nation went from a net lender nation to a net debtor nation in just a generation. How does that possibly happen? Not by accident I think. And all this time our jobs have been exported, our workers have become wage slaves with less off time that the rest of the industrial world, and whatever wealth most of us have had has been vacuumed up by the corporate elite.

There will come a time in the near future when most of us start to realize that we have been fleeced, conned out of the wealth that all the generations before us worked for so hard.

That will be the time when they will have to hunker down in their guarded estate communities, afraid to be seen by an armed citizenry. Pity them when they realize that their armed guards are a part of that citizenry.

Perhaps our own elite should become familiar with the fates of those of the French nobility of the late 18th century and learn why they so feared Dr. Guillotine's 'National Razor'.

After all, they do say that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.