America Is Exceptional at Killing Americans Early | Hacker News Reader

America Is Exceptional at Killing Americans Early

theatlantic.com

43 pointslaurex27 comments

I do not think this is a matter of different approaches to health care, at least nod directly. Many young Americans are just not taking care of themselves. Every day I see 20, 30, 40-somethings who are grossly obese. Just this one factor is going to lead to worse outcomes and higher mortality for COVID as well as most other diseases and accidents across the board.

Absent an ancestral tradition of healthy cooking, people gravitate towards the cheap convenient slop sold at every corner: rice + industrial produced meat, wrapped in 5643 different sauces that give them the illusion of a wide variety. Then there is the time pressure from long work hours. Then the lack of home-making relatives, heavily looked down by the culture. Then the snacks precisely designed to maximize pleasure, while minimizing cost and nutritional value. Then the never ending stream of advertisements for said poor quality food. Then the culture of "my neighbor is not my responsibility, s/he is free to go down the road of perdition.". Then the sedentarism of office work.

The situation is dire. Some obvious tropes:

* Turn off the TV, install an ad blocker, treat ads as personal affronts.

* Buy only food with less than 3 ingredients on the label, ideally just one.

* Cook for your family.

* Weave in your schedule at least 2 hours of movement every day.

Sadly, no way to make that work at scale.

> Absent an ancestral tradition of healthy cooking, people gravitate towards the cheap convenient slop sold at every corner: rice + industrial produced meat, wrapped in 5643 different sauces

If you think rice is a significant part of a standard American diet...

The "moral degradation" argument is a tired one with a long legacy of being used to justify absolutely inane policies.

Truthfully, if medicine were preventative instead of merely reactive we wouldn't be having these kinds of health issues.

Young people aren't taking care of themselves because they don't have access to the kinds of resources which will help them to do that -- namely, affordable, regular doctor's visits.

If access to healthcare was as inexpensive as junk food and Netflix, a lot more people would be going to the doctor.

Prices reflect the values a society encourages. If there is anyone to blame, it is not the individuals, but the make-up of the system itself in terms of what it encourages via economics.

> Young people aren't taking care of themselves because they don't have access to the kinds of resources which will help them to do that -- namely, affordable, regular doctor's visits.

You don't need to visit a doctor to know that if you're overweight, you need to eat less.

You underestimate the power of external accountability and expert opinion in driving decision-making.

A gym membership is pretty affordable if you count the healthcare costs you're going to save down the road. Their fast-food industry is a massive problem. These parasites company do not have the health of their clients at hearth and they should be regulated like cigarettes are. Still, at the end of the day people choose what they eat.

American exceptionalism at work. But we’ll try to burn enough fossil fuels to help the rest of the world catch up.

Interesting article. Would have been great to try to break down the factors to see how they each contribute percentually to the dire situation. Guns (suicides/accidents/crime), health care (opioids/diabetes/other), traffic.

I knew that the healthcare system in the us kills people, but i never thought that its that bad.

Most Americans die of America itself.

America metastasized

American culture; the parasitic form of capitalism sees humans as natural resources, to be consumed and turned into capital.

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