U.S. Slips to 49th in Life Expectancy

You work longer, have less vacation, are less happy and die sooner

No wonder everyone’s on medication 😉… or is that the problem :-O

Reuters: Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects —They found that 15-year survival rates for men and women aged 45 to 65 have fallen in the United States relative to the other 12 countries over the past 30 years.

“But what really surprised us was that all of the usual suspects — smoking, obesity, traffic accidents, and homicides — are not the culprits,” Meunnig said in a statement.

Instead, poor healthcare may be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported.
“The U.S. doesn’t stand out as doing any worse in these areas than any of the other countries we studied, leading us to believe that failings in the U.S. health care system, such as costly specialized and fragmented care, are likely playing a large role in this relatively poor performance on improvements in life expectancy.”

In June, the Commonwealth Fund, which advocates on and does research focusing on healthcare reform, reported that Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as residents of other developed countries — $7,290 per person — but get lower quality and less efficiency.