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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

...also, plenty of EU countries appear to have a life expectancy, for males, less than the 76 years of Amish men for this cohort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

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Probably eastern European countries haven't caught up yet in safety and public health, but its coming.

In the last ten years Poland life expectancy has risen by 5 years, in the same time period US was almost stalled. Now (as of the 2025 projection), Poland has slightly better LE overall.

However, approx. 9% of US population is uninsured, in Europe (including Eastern Europe) health care systems are universal.

Edit: Even for those insured, insurance claim rejection rate is 19%

Yeah, agree. Medecine there has caught up in Poland for sure, and it's catching up in Romania and Hungary too. Eastern europe will have road safety issues for a long time though, so i don't see them reaching WE europe LE at birth until like 2050 (as long as WE don't crash its LE by americanizing, which it might do). LE at 60 though should be around the same level soon enough (road safety do impact older people, but not as much as kids and young men)

Road fatalities in Poland and Czechia were 50 per million inhabitants in 2022 according to this report. https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download... This is already less than Italy and only slightly above EU average. I don't think that small number affects much LE though.

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