With smoking deaths, United States would be in the top half of the longevity

[steven johnson]

The American Healthcare System is really good at treating disease but most disease is not caused by lack of healthcare. It is caused by lifestyle choices. Smoking, drunk driving and teenage pregnancies with attendant premature infants skew the longevity data that unfairly blames the healthcare system.

...a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

No one denies that the American system has problems, including its extraordinarily high costs and unnecessary treatments. But Dr. Preston and other researchers say that the costs aren’t solely due to inefficiency. Americans pay more for health care partly because they get more thorough treatment for some diseases, and partly because they get sick more often than people in Europe and other industrialized countries.

But there are many more differences between Europe and the United States than just the health care system. Americans are more ethnically diverse. They eat different food. They are fatter. Perhaps most important, they used to be exceptionally heavy smokers. For four decades, until the mid-1980s, per-capita cigarette consumption was higher in the United States (particularly among women) than anywhere else in the developed world. Dr. Preston and other researchers have calculated that if deaths due to smoking were excluded, the United States would rise to the top half of the longevity rankings for developed countries.

For all its faults, the American system compares well by some important measures with other developed countries, as Dr. Preston and Ms. Ho enumerate. Americans are more likely to be screened for cancer, and once cancer is detected, they are more likely to survive for five years.

To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System

[sui generis]

1. cart meet horse

if the U.S. wants to provide public healthcare then it can decide whether we're "allowed" to smoke or not. Until then, the nanny state will just have to wait a bit.

"lifestyle choices" that phrase just gives me the creeps.

[Demit]

2. So if we just took some deaths out of the stats, "the United States would rise to the top half"?

How impressive.

[joecool65]

3. Without

red meat, sugar, processed foods, alcohol, lack of exercise, and any other lifestyle choice, the US would be in the top half.
Now, where can I collect the stipend for my study?

[fasttense]

4. S, if Americans weren't so fat, quit smoking and had abortions

when pregnant at a young age, our health statistics would be much better. I guess no one is fat, smokes or gets pregnant at an early age in any other country.

[ElboRuum]

5. Where there's smoke...

...there is a smoking thread.

:popcorn: