The highest rate of death by violence, by a stunning margin
The highest rate of death by car accident, also dramatically so
The highest chance that a child will die before age 5
The second-highest rate of death by coronary heart disease
The second-highest rate of death by lung disease
The highest teen pregnancy rate
The highest rate of women dying due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
(We're dead last among the 17 civilized nations. The other countries have mostly socialized medicine and are mostly in Europe)
Co-author Paula Braveman, who directs the Center on Social Disparities in Health at University of California, San Francisco, said the panel grappled with this question as it searched for explanations for our poor health: "Is it Americans' rugged individualism and the sense that the most important thing is the individual's freedom, and that's so much more important than doing what's right for society?"
Might our national M.O., in other words, be summed up as "Live free and die"?
Raees wrote: The highest rate of death by violence, by a stunning margin
The highest rate of death by car accident, also dramatically so
The highest chance that a child will die before age 5
The second-highest rate of death by coronary heart disease
The second-highest rate of death by lung disease
The highest teen pregnancy rate
The highest rate of women dying due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
(We're dead last among the 17 civilized nations. The other countries have mostly socialized medicine and are mostly in Europe)
Yet so many people want to claw their way into this country to take advantage of the freedoms and opportunities for a better life. If this place was so bad, it seems to me that people would be leaving the US in droves. I agree we have our problems, just like your kid is much more likely to be injured if he chooses to play sports instead of playing in the band. The US is a place of high risk and high rewards. If your ideal life is to have the lowest risk, the most "fairness", and more of a communal style of living, there are other countries in the world that are more suited for those goals. I want the freedom to choose my doctors, my career, my income, my speech, my self defense, my food, my charity, etc. And if these free choices cause me to have a shorter life... I accept that too. You can't live a full throttle life and expect to finish the long race (but it's fun to try).
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
So your study gets to decide which countries in the world count as civilized? I am sure the other 140 nations in the UN think they count as civilized too.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
So between Japan, Switzerland, Australia, Italy, France Spain, Canada, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, Germany Finland, United Kingdom, Portugal, Denmark and the United States, the United States comes in last and your retort is it's not all the developed nations.
I truly believe if I said the sky was blue during the day you would come back with "But it's black at night" rather than discuss the fact that the sky is blue.
As individuals, the study found, "Americans are less likely to smoke and may drink less heavily than their counterparts in peer countries, but they consume the most calories per capita, abuse more prescription and illicit drugs, are less likely to fasten seatbelts, have more traffic accidents involving alcohol, and own more firearms." Yet even fit, nonsmoking Americans have higher disease rates than those elsewhere, the report said.
The panelists' research uncovered no single cause, no rallying point for action, that accounts for the totality of our unhealthiness -- a complexity which makes the message harder to deliver and the solutions harder to achieve.
Alternatively, Woolf said, it's conceivable that "we are on the leading edge of a trend." As other countries catch up to our obesity, and their legions of young smokers age, they could save us from last place.
FredHayek wrote: Yet Americans are living longer than ever before so it isn't all bad.
The ones who are rich, and have good access to health care are... The other 99%, not so much.
Untrue according to the article quoted above.
The authors took pains to counteract the possible assumption that U.S. numbers must be negatively skewed by poor and underserved populations. In fact, the report cites data suggesting that even white, well-off Americans live sicker and die sooner than similarly situated people elsewhere.
In some areas we excel, in others we could definitely improve. I doubt that anyone here would argue that our health care system doesn't need to be overhauled. What I wonder is why you look at these numbers with such delight? We are all Americans here, aren't we?
