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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: combjelly who wrote (501868)8/6/2009 11:41:29 AM
From: i-node  Read Replies (2) of 1574005
 

Military deaths don't significantly impact life expectancy rates. Traffic fatalities do.


It isn't just those two items. There are MANY of American lifestyle choices and behaviors that influence life expectancy. (Military deaths were included solely because it makes the point very clearly that some countries have more of some things than France does). Drunk driving is a big item; in many nations of the world, it is either a rarity or nonexistent, and even if someone did it, the likelihood of a resulting injury is small.

Junk food is a big one. Sedentary lifestyles another. Persons in the US and UK spend more time watching TV than in any other country on earth). Highway miles driven, the number of big trucks on our highways, the types of vehicles, all factor in. Also, the fact that we have better medical care if an injured person makes it to the hospital alive factors in the other way.

The incidence of murder in America's inner cities coincidentally to drugs is huge. American kids kill each other at an alarming rate. No concern, whatsoever, about the sanctity of human life. My favorite TV show is The First 48 and has been for a number of years. Almost every episode involves drug related murders; only occasionally, as it turns out, are murders NOT drug related. More shocking than the murders are the trivial amounts of drugs that will get a person killed and the frequency with which this happens.

The point is there are many sociological reasons why our life expectancy may be lower than that in other countries.

I obviously haven't done it, and know of no one who has, but it is pretty evident that if you were to perform a multiple regression/correlation so as to break out the effects of our health care system versus these other factors, the health care system would be providing a substantial boost to life expectancy versus these other factors (the nature and extent of which are different in other countries) which drag it down. I can't imagine you would even try to argue this point.

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