Well, there are some trends (such as dropping life expectancy for whites without college degree [0]), which are without precedent. It's literally unheard for developed country to have a dropping life expectancy in XX century.

So, maybe US being functional democracy, with working feeback loop from voters to elites (no sarcasm here) did something extraordinary because of extraordinary circumstances.

I hold no strong opinion here, but this is something worth evaluating, IMO.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/the-co...