Many Canadians prefer our health system to theirs. Especially the ones who come here or are actually sent here by the Canadian system for care.
What countries at what ages?
Here's a discussion of why life expectancy at birth - which liberals love to use to mislead the gullible - is a poor basis of comparison:
Infant mortality has two major problems as a health care outcome measure. First, it is affected by data definition problems and differences in common health care practice. For example, U.S. physicians (and also those in some other countries) are more likely to resuscitate very small premature babies, who later die. This U.S. practice raises measured infant mortality (and neonatal but not perinatal mortality). Pushing in the same direction, babies who die before their births are recorded are more likely to be classified as stillbirths in other countries, especially Japan and France. In the U.S., nonviable births are often recorded as live births, making the U.S. infant mortality rate misleadingly appear high. In a detailed study of medical records and birth and death certificates in Philadelphia, Gibson et. al. (2000) found that infant mortality had been overstated by 40 percent by the recording of nonviable births as live births alone. These errors are systematic, tending to make the health care system in the U.S. and other countries with similar medical and record-keeping traditions appear less efficient. The differences can be important quantitatively.16 In a comparison reported by Korbin Liu and Maryln Moon (1992, p. 109), a more inclusive measure (combining infant mortality and stillbirths) moved the U.S. up from 18th to 15th and moved Japan from first to third.17, 18 There is another problem with infant mortality as a health output. Additional effective health care may improve the odds of a live birth of a baby with poor survival chances. If so, additional health care may actually make measured infant mortality worse, rather than better. This would make that the country that provided this additional health care appear to both spend more on health care and have poorer outcomes.
higher in suicide, presumably for cultural and religious reasons, but the difference in suicides is not nearly great enough to overcome the U.S. high rates in accidents and homicide (OECD 2007b).
16 For more on the measurement problems involved in infant mortality, see (Joumard, André, Nicq and Chatal 2008, pp. 47-49; Gibson et al 2000, pp. 1303 and Frech and Miller, 1999, pp. 28-29). 17 Liu and Moon do not report the total number of countries. 18 While in the rich countries, life expectancy is probably better measured than infant mortality, this relationship reverses in the poor countries. In those countries, life expectancy is generally derived from infant mortality applied to model life tables, not any actual count of age-specific mortality (Prichett and Summers 1986, pp. 858, 859).
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Second and probably even more important, infant (and perinatal and neonatal) mortality are strongly and quickly influenced by other external influences, especially the mother’s behavior and lifestyle, such as obesity, tobacco use, excessive alcohol use and recreational drug use (Liu and Moon 1992, p. 113; O’Neil and O’Neil 2008, pp. 8-12). Infant mortality is strongly linked to birthweight, itself largely a result of lifestyle choices (and cultural and environmental influences). The role of genetic variation across populations is controversial, but it clearly plays a role at the individual level.19 Teenage mothers are more likely to have low-birthweight babies. Mortality rates for infants born to unwed mothers were about two times as high as for infants born to married women in the U.S. (Liu and Moon, 1992, p. 112).20 The mortality rates for infants born to U.S. teenage mothers is from 1.5 to 3.5 times as high as the rate for infants born to mothers aged 25-29 (Liu and Moon 1992, p. 112). The U.S. rate of births for teenage mothers is very high, 2.8 times Canada and 7 times Sweden and Japan. If the U.S. had the higher birth weights of Canada, its infant mortality would be slightly lower than Canada’s, 5.4 v. 5.5 per 1,000 (O’Neil and O’Neil, 2008, p. 10).21 Further, apart from worsening the infant mortality statistics, the low birthweights of the U.S. lead directly to higher health care utilization and total spending because health care for low birthweight babies is costly.
aei.org
Here's an article on state and ethnic group life expectancy issues in the US:
The U.S. is really divided into eight different Americas when it comes to life expectancy, researchers report.
Those "eight Americas" have a life expectancy gap of almost 14 years, similar to gaps between economically developed and emerging countries, note the researchers.
......
Here are the eight Americas, from highest to lowest life expectancy, as of 2001:
America 1
Average life expectancy: nearly 85 years.
Residents: about 10 million Asians.
That's not quite all the Asians in the U.S.
Those in "America 1" live in counties where Pacific Islanders make up less than 40% of Asians. All other Asians living in the U.S. are in "America 3."
America 2
Average life expectancy: 79 years.
Residents: 3.6 million low-income rural whites living in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska with income and education below the national average.
America 3
Average life expectancy: nearly 78 years.
Residents: 214 million people -- mainly whites, with small numbers of Asians and Native Americans -- with average income and education slightly above the national average.
America 4
Average life expectancy: 75 years.
Residents: more than 16 million low-income whites living in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley; 30% of them haven't finished high school.
America 5
Average-life expectancy: almost 73 years.
Residents: 1 million Native Americans living in the western mountains and plains areas, excluding the West Coast.
Most live on reservations in the "Four Corners" area -- where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet -- or in the Dakotas.
America 6
Average life expectancy: nearly 73 years.
Residents: more than 23 million blacks who aren't low-income blacks living in the South or high-risk urban blacks.
America 7
Average life expectancy: about 71 years.
Residents: nearly 6 million low-income blacks in the Mississippi Valley and the South.
America 8
Average life expectancy: around 71 years.
Residents: 7.5 million high-risk urban blacks. They were blacks (aged 15 to 74 years) living in urban counties with high homicide rates.
Putting It in Perspective
Murray's team compared the eight Americas to real countries.
"Ten million Americans with the best health have achieved one of the highest levels of life expectancy on record, three years better than Japan," the researchers write.
"At the same time," they continue, "tens of millions of Americans are experiencing levels of health that are more typical of middle-income or low-income developing countries."
For instance, they note that the nearly 16-year life expectancy gap between men in Americas 1 and 8 equals the gap between Iceland and the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.
Why the Difference?
Many factors likely created the life expectancy gaps among the eight Americas.
Chronic diseases, injuries, alcohol use, smoking, extra pounds, and high blood pressure, cholesterol, or glucose (blood sugar) are among those factors, Murray's team notes.
Many of those risks can be avoided or managed. Ask your doctor if you can do anything to help make your life healthier and longer.
Life Expectancy by State
Here's a simpler way to look at life expectancy.
This list, provided by Harvard's Initiative for Global Health, ranks life expectancy for all U.S. states and Washington, D.C., as of 1999. Ties are listed alphabetically.
These rankings don't factor in race, income, or other data.
1. Hawaii: 80 years
2. Minnesota: 78.8 years
3. Connecticut: 78.7 years
3. Utah: 78.7 years
......
Washington, D.C.: 72 years
webmd.com |
