American Life Expectancy Falls Compared to Europe

For over a decade now, life expectancy in America has been falling and now the wealthiest middle-aged and older adults in the U.S. have roughly the same likelihood of dying over a 12-year period as the poorest adults in northern and western Europe. And this doesn't factor in the horrific damage being done to medical research and health care agencies being done by DOGE and RFK, Jr.  Expect things to get even worse, particularly among the MAGA white working class base in which many rely on Medicaid for health coverage that is targeted for large cuts in the tax and spend cuts bill being pushed through Congress by Republicans. Meanwhile, the measles outbreak in Texas is worsening and a second child has died thanks to anti-vaccine extremists- including RFK, Jr.  - who have revived a disease that not that long ago had been deemed eradicated. All of this shows that America is exceptional, but in a very  negative way that literally killing citizens prematurely.  Sadly, things will likely worsen under the Felon's regime as consumer costs soar and  social safety net programs are gutted.  Those who will suffer most?  MAGA poor and working class voters and their families. A piece at NBC News looks at the troubling problem that ought to be a national embarrassment: 

Today, the wealthiest middle-aged and older adults in the U.S. have roughly the same likelihood of dying over a 12-year period as the poorest adults in northern and western Europe, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. 

Some medical and health policy experts say the trend is a sign of deep-seated issues not just within the U.S. health care system, but with the typical American lifestyle of overconsuming junk food, not getting enough exercise and facing loneliness or financial stress.

The study looked at the relationship between wealth and mortality among nearly 74,000 adults from 2010 to 2022. More than 19,000 of the adults were in the U.S., and roughly 54,000 were spread across 16 countries in Europe. All were ages 50 to 85.

The researchers divided the participants into four groups based on their overall assets (not including their homes). In both Europe and the U.S., the group with the most assets — the wealthiest — had a 40% lower mortality rate than the poorest group.

The poorest people in the U.S. had the highest mortality rate of any group, which is consistent with previous research showing that health outcomes are worse in America. 

“We were expecting to find greater inequity in the U.S. But what was surprising was how the richest in the U.S. compared to the richest in Europe,” said Irene Papanicolas, the study’s lead author, who directs the Center for Health System Sustainability at Brown University’s School of Public Health.

The wealthiest group in northern and western Europe had mortality rates about 35% lower than the wealthiest group in the U.S., she said.

Poor health outcomes in the U.S. are often attributed, in part, to a lack of access to affordable health care, which can result in high out-of-pocket costs for medication or procedures — or in some cases, not seeing a doctor at all. 

“Certainly health care must have something to do with it, but it cannot be even a dominant part of the story if we’re seeing wealthier Americans having similar or worse outcomes than poor individuals in other wealthy countries.”

In addition to universal health care, many European countries offer free or heavily subsidized higher education and more comprehensive unemployment benefits compared with the U.S. 

“A lot of these countries have social welfare programs that don’t prevent people from losing their jobs or experiencing poverty, but when they go through those tough times, it doesn’t threaten their health,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

Woolf said the Trump administration’s recent gutting of federal health agencies and termination of research grants puts the U.S. on the wrong trajectory when it comes to lowering risk factors for mortality. 

“The thing that’s alarming us so much in the health and medicine world is that the policies that are now being pursued in a pretty muscular way are the opposite of what you would want to do to make America healthy again,” he said, referring to Kennedy’s agenda. 

“In all likelihood, my prediction will be that the gap in health between Americans and people in other countries is now going to widen even more dramatically,” Woolf said.