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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (11076)	11/5/2009 9:57:47 AM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

My guess is lengthen it. That would definitely not have been my guess. When I posted the comment it was in the context of wondering how much it would shorten it. The reason I assume shorter is that the biggest impact on life expectancy comes from those dying very early, which is mostly a function of accident once you get past the infant stage. Nothing we do to health care will change the accident rate. The uninsured are a small percentage of the population. The question is, then, whether improvements in their life expectancy by having easier access to health care (I'm assuming that they have access now, just not convenient enough to use for routine matters) will be greater than the impact of poorer treatment of the vast majority. Since routine matters don't usually cause death and since they are so few in number, I would expect then not to lengthen life expectancy by much.