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US Life Expectancy Declines For the First Time Since 1993 (washingtonpost.com) 497

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source) -- a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans. Its findings show increases in "virtually every cause of death. It's all ages," said David Weir, director of the health and retirement study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Over the past five years, he noted, improvements in death rates were among the smallest of the past four decades. "There's this just across-the-board [phenomenon] of not doing very well in the United States." Overall, life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015, according to the latest data. The last time U.S. life expectancy at birth declined was in 1993, when it dropped from 75.6 to 75.4, according to World Bank data. The overall death rate rose 1.2 percent in 2015, its first uptick since 1999. More than 2.7 million people died, about 45 percent of them from heart disease or cancer.
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US Life Expectancy Declines For the First Time Since 1993

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:00PM (#53450415)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Only 80 killed in 10 years, sounds like the defense was working for the most part.

      The problem with healthcare is there is no ceiling to the cost and the end result is always the same, everyone dies eventually. Most of the early deaths appear to be lifestyle related anyway. Any reasonable person should prefer money to be spent on preventing unnecessary deaths (like terrorism) and just take care of themselves better to handle the longevity part.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:45PM (#53450577)

        A reasonable person would reject spending on the prevention of statistically unlikely causes of death (like terrorism). A reasonable person has no problem spending on probable causes of early death, especially when such spending saves money long term (like literally every other Western public health system).

      • by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:56PM (#53450603) Journal

        Only 80 killed in 10 years, sounds like the defense was working for the most part.

        I have a rock that keeps tigers away. It's 100% effective; I've never even seen a tiger. If you're interested, I'll sell it to you for the low, low price of $637 billion.

      • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @03:39AM (#53451041) Homepage Journal

        Only 80 killed in 10 years, sounds like the defense was working for the most part.

        The problem with healthcare is there is no ceiling to the cost and the end result is always the same, everyone dies eventually. Most of the early deaths appear to be lifestyle related anyway. Any reasonable person should prefer money to be spent on preventing unnecessary deaths (like terrorism) and just take care of themselves better to handle the longevity part.

        The US now has 10 aircraft carriers, 2 under construction, and 1 planned. (source) [wikipedia.org]

        Military spending is 54% [nationalpriorities.org] of our national budget, which is more than the amount of our deficit. More than the combined spending of the next seven countries [pgpf.org].

        What was that you were saying about spending ceilings?

    • by quenda ( 644621 ) on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:13PM (#53450461)

      The only problem (compared to other countries) with US healthcare is its outrageous cost.
      There is zero evidence that healthcare quality is to blame for the slightly lower life expectancy.

      Looking at the data, things like obesity, motor vehicle accidents and gun violence are contributors.
      Perhaps the money could be better spent on roads and nutritional education than healthcare?

      • by quax ( 19371 )

        I guess Cuba beating you in the achieved infant death rate is not evidence enough: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/... [infoplease.com]

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The only problem (compared to other countries) with US healthcare is its outrageous cost. There is zero evidence that healthcare quality is to blame for the slightly lower life expectancy.

        I only have a few anecdotal stories to go by, but I know at least one with back problems and one with heart problems stuck where they got on-and-off health problems that lead to problems paying insurance that lead to the being effectively outside the system and any insurance that will take them on now excludes everything related to the their pre-existing condition. All they get is emergency care, when they should have had surgery. So I definitively think distribution of care is still some part of the lower

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          The cost of US healthcare is certainly reducing people's quality of life.
          I'm just saying the reason for lower life expectancy in the US is not the quality of healthcare.
          Look at a demographic breakdown of health and life expectancy and you will find some surprises.

      • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @05:25AM (#53451297)

        Looking at the data, things like obesity, motor vehicle accidents and gun violence are contributors.

        Resource management is a responsibility of our government, so death is by design and backed by policy.

        That said, you want to bring gun violence as a factor here, when over 60% of those deaths were caused by suicide. An often overlooked component of gun violence statistics to avoid funding mental health for some reason while making the 2nd Amendment a political talking point. Tobacco kills over 450,000 Americans every year, which makes motor vehicles look like a minor nuisance by comparison, but hey let's not ever talk about making tobacco illegal. After all, it helps feed the responsibility of resource management tremendously.

    • More than 80 Americans needed healthcare?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Government doesn't care about ordinary Americans. So government spending doesn't help ordinary Americans live longer, better lives. Only insiders benefit. The rest of us bear the burden.

    • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      What's killing us is our affluent lifestyle. We eat more and work less than ever. No exercise and years spent on the couch. It's not healthcare but bad habits that's killing us.

    • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

      Same problem as the military. The military pays $800 for a hammer, we pay $800 for an aspirin.

    • Health care spending as a percent of GDP is double what it is in all advanced economies and we have worse outcomes by several measures. THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO SPEND MORE MONEY! WE ALREADY DO THAT BY A HUGE AMOUNT! The fix involves getting the drug, hospital and insurance prices down and that involves spending LESS money.

  • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:18PM (#53450483)
    TFA links to some summaries, but some of the categories (particular deaths due to accidents) are aggravatingly unspecific. Alzheimer's and accidents (unintentional injuries) had the largest year-over-year increases, at +4.0 and +2.7 deaths per 100,000. The other causes were all +1.5 or less. The increase in these two exceeded the increases in all the other top-10 combined.

    I'm really curious to see what the breakdown for unintentional injury deaths looks like for 2015. We're in the middle of a prescription painkiller addiction epidemic which is going largely unreported by the media. Two years ago, overdoses displaced motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of accidental death - a position it had held for over a half century. This year we lost more famous people to overdoses than to gun violence, even though the media spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time focusing on the latter. The day of the UCLA shooting (1 murder, 1 suicide), there was a synthetic drug poisoning incident at a concert in Florida which killed 2 and sent 60 to the hospital. But the media concentrated almost entirely on the UCLA shooting.
    • by skids ( 119237 )

      See the ars article for better charts. Note the age-adjusted ones show the impact on the death rate, so they essentially count lifetime lost, not lives. I agree, pills are a big part of this. And probably stress, given the increase in heart disease and strokes.

  • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Thursday December 08, 2016 @11:39PM (#53450555)

    For the plebs, it's been dropping. Reason #2458 why raising the age for SS or Medicare is fascist BS.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hyades1 ( 1149581 )

      If they think it's bad now, just wait 'til Herr Trump gets those immigrant "recreation camps" open with the "community showers".

  • by DivineKnight ( 3763507 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @01:55AM (#53450835)

    So what you're saying is, maybe I shouldn't be drinking the mercury that comes out of those old school thermometers, and playing with those discarded fire-alarms inside that off-limits shack with the peeling lead paint?

  • by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @02:24AM (#53450913)
    Aging population is a problem here (EU) and some of the psot mentionned (mental degeneration like alzeihmer, accident) are stuff which happens more likely to old population. Looking at the median age , US population became older. Could it be simply the median age rising it finally "catch up" with the death toll (e.g. you have two factors going against each other, rising quality of care and rising median age, maybe we did not see the rising median age effect before because it was covered by rising quality of care ?). Median age in years
    1960 29.5
    1970 28.1
    1980 30
    1990 32.9
    2000 35.3
    2010 37.2
    2015 37.8
  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @02:33AM (#53450929)

    The problem is that there is no incentive for corporations to have people live healthy lives. As a result of this people are slowly being killed by the things they eat and the medicines they take. The obvious solution is to create feedback loops that discourage damaging profit motives.

    For example, if you sell a product and a customer become ill as a result, your company has to contribute to their rehabilitation. This of course has the caveat of needing to record what people buy (already done by most companies) and relying on statistical analysis. As more and more data correlates a product to illness, the heavier the monetary burden is put on the corporation making it.

    Corporation have already fubar'd a lot of people so the burden is going to be quite heavy for them for many years but if they correct the products they know are hurting people, it will decrease over time. If they decide, "fuck it, sell it anyway" then the monetary burden will increase until it drives them out of business.

    • by ( 4475953 )

      I would be surprised if this wasn't already in effect in the US. If a company's products cause illness, won't they loose any class action suit and have to pay millions? Don't they break the law by knowingly selling products that cause illness? I would think so.

      Also, the idea of slowly forcing companies out of business by putting a financial burden on them if they cause illness or even death seems a bit odd to me. You don't want to prevent illness and death in the first place by adequate consumer protection

      • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @06:43AM (#53451457)

        If a company's products cause illness, won't they loose any class action suit and have to pay millions? Don't they break the law by knowingly selling products that cause illness? I would think so.

        How many decades did it take to finally bring tobacco companies under control? the truth is that we still haven't despite the science. food companies are using the same tactics of doubt to delay this fight and make as much money as they can while millions die.

        You don't want to prevent illness and death in the first place by adequate consumer protection laws and their enforcement?

        As long as we're making magical wishes, why don't we wish for bad people to not be bad. In the meantime, it's best to attack problems using the most effective methods.

        A company can just kill a few customers here and there if they can get away with it financially? Only in the US can someone come up with such an idea...

        A few people? They are killing millions of people and getting away with it because it's difficult to prove because it's the extended use of their product that kills. Therefore, it only makes sense to make it so that their actions catch up with them, even if it takes 40 years to manifest heart disease.

  • Obesity? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @02:40AM (#53450945) Homepage

    Causes of death are often complex, especially in older people, who may be suffering from a variety of issues simultaneously. Nonetheless, one underlying cause should not be overlooked: increasing obesity in the US [wikipedia.org] drives a lot of other health issues.

  • Maybe the post WWII "baby boomers" are getting old, and we reach a step where these people just start to die. Thus, despite progresses in medical science, statistics are skewed.
  • Insurance is a leech (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jesus H Rolle ( 4603733 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @04:03AM (#53451081)
    Americans paid $3.2 trillion for healthcare in 2015. That's $10,000 per capita. We already spend far more than needed for every American to have quality healthcare. The insurance companies are middle persons who grab enough of that money to create a healthcare shortage. In exchange, they provide a service that could be replicated by a team of talented appers in less than a year. It's just databases and arithmetic, with front end apps for users.

    Give people quality healthcare and they'll live longer.

    • Eh? The insurance companies may be a leech but they are not the root of the problem. Why is it that going to the dentist costs roughly the same now with insurance as it did in the 1970s without insurance? The reason is, once there was insurance, all of the billers realized they could raise their rates because individuals could no longer shop. Their insurance company specified where they could go and what they could get done.

      It is the same with copays. The copay that you pay today is the same as the cost of

      • by Hulfs ( 588819 )

        I don't entirely disagree with your assertion, especially in hospital billing, but you're aware of this thing called inflation right? A 1975 dollar has the buying power of $4.55 today (according to the dollartimes inflation calculator).

        My copays are $25 for a general visit. So, let's go with your assertion that $25 is what you paid for a full office visit in 1975 (I wasn't alive then, but I'll trust you), and convert that to today's dollar. That's $113.75, which is actually LESS than my insurance provide

  • In a country with... The highest levels of obesity in the world. Where the citizens carry lethal weapons and shootings are a daily occurrence. Has a privatized health care system that many people can not afford to be part of. Why would anyone be surprised that the average lifespan is decreasing?
  • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @05:00AM (#53451235)

    The disturbing part is not the fact that longevity is in decline.

    The disturbing part is the likelihood that it is by design.

    Every government has a responsibility of resource management, and when a population continues to increase, policies and procedures must be put in place to help execute that responsibility.

    If you take a look at our policies and legal products, it paints quite an alarming picture. Tobacco is a legal product. From a health perspective, it makes absolutely zero fucking sense, as it kills 450,000 Americans every year, while providing zero benefit for a human body.

    That said, it is a legal product because it kills 450,000 Americans every year. It also is a leading cause of cancer, so government also gets the benefit of ticking off the "creates jobs" box with all of the related diseases caused by tobacco, namely the highly-profitable Cancer Industrial Complex. You really believe we're searching for a cure to eradicate an industry that generates well over $100 billion a year in profits, along with the twisted side benefit of population control? Think again.

    And tobacco is but one example of resource management. Think marijuana is still considered "deadly" per DEA Schedule standards? Hardly. It's not legal because it's not deadly enough to benefit resource management. It also helps fund the War on Drugs, creates thousands of jobs in the DEA, and feeds the Privatized Prison Complex. The only downside is we've earned the illustrious moniker of The Incarcerated States of America, but clearly maintaining an illegal status is worth it.

    Big Pharma has legalized the opium den in quite an elegant and profitable way, creating addicts, jobs, and deaths. And every study says HFCS is bad for you? Yup, let's ensure we put that shit in as many food products as possible while minimizing health risks. Carcinogens in makeup? Sure, why not. All examples of policy feeding the resource management responsibility.

    TL; DR - Death is by design, backed by policy, because every government has a responsibility of resource management.

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