They do? I think you are very wrong. For an example, why are we behind in life longevity and infant mortality rate?
Because we measure infant mortality differently, and because on the average we have more accidents and violent deaths than Europe. We also receive more illegal immigrants than European countries and on the average they have a lower life expectancy. Adjust for all of those factors and our life expectancy is higher than the European average. Beyond that both the infant mortality rate, and the life expectancy rate are affected by many other factors than the medical system. And those two measurements are only one of many things that are affected the medical care systems. Look at other stats like cancer survival rates and we do better than Europe (true cancer survival rates are also affected by other factors besides the medical system, but probably not to the same degree that life expectancy is)
Did it ever cross your mind that every country on that list could come up with extenuating circumstances that hurt their longevity?
And frankly, I have no intention of going through each of your points like the one about illegal immigrants and pointing out to you that even if they are included in US lifespan statistics which I suspect is not true, the vast majority of illegal immigrants are young when they enter this country, not old and ready to die. Furthermore, I would also point out that Mexico's lifespan is very similar in length to the US's. Given that most illegals come from Mexico and that there are only 12 million of them out of 300 million Americans, it stands to reason that the presumably longer American lifespan [according to you and your resources] would skew the lifespan statistics higher.......and yet, they don't. Why Tim?
No, Tim, I don't want to argue each point to death [so to speak] until the original premise which is that we are doing poorly when it comes to health care in this country gets so lost it becomes nothing more than so much minutia.
"Any change can cause stress, and obviously there has been a lot of change in Eastern Europe. An increased level of capitalism wasn't the only change, and some of the countries in the study that moved most strongly to capitalism are the countries where the study observed the least increase in "the gap " between male mortality and female mortality. Also "the gap" isn't the real issue, but rather changes in male mortality. The gap increases as female mortality decreases, but that isn't unhealthy for men."
Hogwash, that's ridiculous. Every single point in my paragraph is true, even obviously true. Eastern Europe has had a lot of changes in addition to "more capitalism", and to say otherwise reflects ignorance or dishonesty. As for the gap being the issue, thats also a silly thought. The more life span for woman goes up, the more of a gap you have, but life span for women increasing is a good thing. If you want to present relevant data, don't talk about gaps, talk about the actual changes in life span for men. Its unreasonable to present improvements in how long women live as bad.
No one is saying that an increase in the lifespan for women is bad. However, shouldn't there be a corresponding increase in the lifespan for men? |
