the US spends the most on healthcare but has the shortest life expectancy

“The Role of Alcohol, Drugs, and Deaths of Despair in the U.S.’s Falling Life Expectancy”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7144704/

- Death from violent crime has actually decreased in the US (the sensational news of it hasn’t)

- Deaths from dangerous addictions (terrible trend) skews the statistics because of the younger age of death

- Women and men in the 50th percentile of income is on par with other wealthy nations

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/

[1] gives some details about why that is so

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/whats-beh...

I used to think problems in US healthcare were just something other people have to deal with, and that along with my (low) six figure salary I would get access to world-class care. A few things changed my view on this. The US healthcare system has problems that money can’t fix.

I went to grad school and had to pay $6k out of pocket with no income for a horrible insurance plan. There are no better options on the open market. The system has not found a low cost solution.

I had a kidney stone and associated infection. Short of just going to the emergency finding care is a nightmare. My insurance website (Anthem) is consistently incorrect and out of date. Doctors all have their own websites and preferred means of contact. Of course everyone points fingers but when you’re in extreme pain you don’t care why the system doesn’t work, what matters is the system doesn’t work.

It’s often impossible to get in contact with a person. This is true for insurance of course but also increasingly true with doctors. The system has decided that robots are best for talking with sick people.

Information is not standardized. The best record of my vaccination record is in CVS because I’ve moved around the US a few times and it doesn’t follow me. As for my other medical records, who knows. Of course covid vaccines were stored on a pathetic paper card which could easily be destroyed by…anything.

Referrals take forever. My doctor said she would mail me a referral in a couple weeks. A couple weeks! By mail!

I was only able to transfer medical information out by fax machine because it’s “more secure”. No one has fax machines anymore. Of course I had to use a shady virtual fax machine app to get the information I needed.

It doesn’t surprise me that Americans have such poor health. The system is designed to extract money, not provide healthcare. A good system would provide care at cost, but a public company physically cannot do this.