Is that acceptable? Other wealthy nations are improving much more rapidly. Certainly the U.S. could be doing better. It's immoral, a tragedy, and an embarrassment.
From the article;
The reasons for the United States' lag are well known. It has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any of the countries in the study, and the highest obesity rate. It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the “largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs,” the researchers wrote.
Tellingly, the United States was the first high-income country to see a halt to the pattern of increasing height in adulthood, a reliable indicator of improving public health, according to Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London, who led the research team.
Some Americans get a “bad start to life in nutrition and education” and suffer “high rates of homicide,” Ezzati said. “And then lack of universal insurance. Some people probably get diagnosed too little and too late.
> At some point this trend, paticularly the opiods, has to start shortening average lifespans.
I don't know what effects drugs, including opiods, have on lifespan. Certainly, taking the right prescription drugs extends lifespan in many cases. But even the wrong one might affect quality of life more than lifespan.