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Comment by pacaro | Hacker News Reader

All participants lived in a society with socialized healthcare built around a “free at the point of service” model. That’s not to say that socioeconomic status doesn’t play a part (as other commenters have noted) but the difference in access to healthcare due to wealth is relatively small in the UK in general

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There are pretty big differences in life expectancy here in Scotland - which given that it is heavily location based suggests that "socioeconomic status" plays a huge role.

"Men in the least deprived areas of Scotland may live 12.5 years longer than those in the most deprived areas while women in the least deprived areas could expect to live 8.5 years longer than those in the most deprived."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-2964...

Edit: Interactive visualization of deprivation in Scotland: http://simd.scot/

False. All participants were born and took their IQ tests a year before the very first elements of the NHS came into existence.

And health (and all other) outcomes are strongly affected in the UK by geography. On average you'll live in Sussex nearly a decade longer than in Cowdenbeath. In Glasgow as late as the mid-1980s the average male life expectancy was 58 years, and then Scotland had the shit kicked out of it, on purpose, for twelve years, by the 1979 Thatcher government. Cuts in healthcare were inflicted disproportionately-severely on places which did not vote for the Conservatives, and nowhere were they more severe than central Scotland and south Wales.

False? The subjects have lived >75% of their lives with national health. And the older you are the more you use health services. While it may be the least good in Scotland, it’s enormously better than being uninsured in the US where people are understandably reluctant to visit the doctor’s office at all.

Nothing you say contradicts the parent’s post. So ‘false’ is incorrect as well as obnoxious.

There are still wide health inequalities in the UK.

Poor people eat worse food; don't get as much exercise; and smoke more.

You can predict average life expectancy by post-code, and that's based on socio-economic factors.

> Poor people eat worse food; don't get as much exercise; and smoke more

How is choosing to smoke more an inequality?

That’s the kind of thing that population health researchers study.

Answers include availability, lack of availability of healthier alternatives, targeted marketing, being missed by anti-smoking campaigns, and peer group influences.

While smoking may be a personal choice, it is not made in a vacuum.

Smoking is “reward now, pay later”

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

I suspect because if your peer group smoke it is much more difficult to choose to not to smoke?

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