The Gap Between Rich and Poor Americans' Health Is Widening

I think the actual metric is extremely complicated. By and large, symptoms of diseases and illness are based on male patients. Drug trials often exclude women (due to pregnancy risk) and many exclude pregnant women (forcing pregnant women to go without necessary medication to protect the fetus). Certain women's cancers like breast cancer recieve significant income but other issues like endomeitrosis recieve little to no research. Women are statistically forced to wait longer at ER and have their pain dismissed more regularly as not indicating anything serious.

So in some ways men are considered 'default' for drug trials, clinical health profiles, their pain and health are considered more seriously, etc. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of money for mental health geared towards men in particular, certain cancers that are male specific are ignored, and there isn't as much pressure for thinness and health on men as there are women socially.

So I don't think there's clear lines that by far X gender is oppressed on all levels in the healthcare field. It would be more accurate to presume that there are many different systemic failures correlated with different demographics, and this affects different demographics differently.

While I agree with you that class has a massive influence, I would hesitate to agree with you that the country's problems should be considered primarily class based. We are still only a generation past (less than a generation? arguably still ongoing?) purposefully refusing to lend or perform economic deals with people based on their race or gender. This would show up as class stratification but has a racial/sexist cause, so it may be inaccurate to presume that solely economic solution would resolve all other societal stratification issues.

(But I really do agree with you we need to remove barriers of economic class transfer.)

The paper also explicitly defined health justice as "a measure of the correlation of health outcomes with income, race/ethnicity and sex; and a summary health equity metric.", which doesn't sound like much of an editorialization to me.

The same resume with a Black sounding name gets far less traction than a stereotypically white name. Income and race are, unfortunately, coupled.

I think economic justice and racial equality and gender equality all come hand-in-hand.

When you hear people talking about racial injustice, while you advocate for economic equality, I think both are ultimately advocating for the same position.

In other words, does racism and gender create the income inequality we see across the board? No, but is getting rid of racism and gender inequality required to diminish income inequality? Yes.

That sounds unfair, but according to the staistics I can find [0] [1], breast cancer kills more and/or younger people (mostly women) than prostate cancer, which kills slightly less and/or older men (many men die with prostate cancer, but not of it).

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/cancer

[1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

>It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

That fast food looks quick, convenient and affordable when you're going from one job to another and don't have much time or the additional money to spend on healthier fast casual eating options.

I do not disagree that whole fruits and vegetables are, by and large, cheap and ubiquitous. If the health outcomes were tied to "cheap and ubiquitous" produce, we'd be off the charts. Yet, here we are.

My point is workers who are barely scraping by are disadvantaged to not have the flexibility that higher-income earners do, to actually have the time/energy to cook a healthy meal. Or pay someone else to do it. They end up opting for meals that don't offer the macronutrient composition they need (e.g., frequently the issue is overconsumption of carbs), and are lacking in micronutrients as well (because there aren't enough fruit/vegetable servings in their diet).

There is a caravan of Americans who went to Canada to get affordable insulin [1]. From a “first world country”.

The answer is universal healthcare. Everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-health-insulin/ame...

You misunderstand the problem.

You "die" from a heavy metal or other accumulating poisons only if you get an acute poisoning with a pretty large amount.

But if you get only tiny amounts for decades you don't die. You just suffer form a lot of "minor" ailments, and most of the time nobody even attributes it to lead (or mercury or whatever). That's because the correlation with aging is almost 1 - after all this can go on for decades with imperceptibly tiny increases in issues, completely in line with aging. Your brain will function less well. Your eyes may be dry and other minor sight issues. Key word "minor", you will not have some big clear symptoms, you will have lots of small issues. A few more warts from decade to decade. A bit more psoriasis. A few cramps. You are more easily tired ("it's the stress"). Maybe some slight depression, occasionally, and you don't get anything done. You get more colds than ten years ago and they last longer. Allergies start and grow.

Check my history, I posted about it, I had chronic (mercury) poisoning diagnosed, and only through luck and persistence. I have a long list of such symptoms that are all gone now even though I'm ten years older now than when I started (chelation) treatment, and which I myself, just like any doctor, always thought were "normal" issues that everybody has. That includes stuff like a nodule disappearing from my thyroid and the thyroid shrinking to normal size, to the great amazement of the endocrinologist, under chelation treatment within less than a year, after it had been there for over two decades. Needless to say, instead of asking questions and following up on how I achieved the miracle - nothing at all. And it wasn't some random miracle that cannot be explained, clearly this had to do with the chelation treatment, since that exact area became very active exactly after the 4th or 5th such treatment. Nobody cares.

Anyway, your post shows one of the problems: If there isn't a big problem visible right away there is none. Heavy metal poisonings with tiny amounts over decades are next to impossible to prove, unless you are "lucky" and for some reason when you are tested you actually have quite a bit moving around in your blood (unusual for such chronic exposure, where most of it is stored in various organs).

So nobody knows - wants to know? - how big the problem really is. My own doctor, researcher at a university clinic, is pretty pessimistic though.

Your ill health and bankruptcy become someone else's yacht or private jet.

It's pure vampirism. There is no other word for it.

Future executive function is highly correlated with high socio-economic status of childhood.

I would hazard a guess that neither you, nor anyone you know, is a single parent working multiple minimum-wage jobs to provide for a couple of kids living in rented space, with poor transportation available, no easy access to things like laundry facilities, living in a food desert, with no high socio-economic status people in their personal network.

In short, your privileged experience doesn't even come close to what the bottom 20%-40% of Americans live.

Does this mean that some of those Americans are to blame due to living such an unhealthy lifestyle?