You have to wonder if “reasoning and problem solving” might be a leading indicator for longevity trends…
Yes, they did the same thing with the vaccine, from what I’ve heard. The health influencers did not disclose their remuneration, unfortunately. I like the phrase ‘paid liars’.
Why are you replying to a 1 1/2 year old post to try and start a discussion about COVID vaccine?
If health influencers were paid to promote a vaccine targeting the infectious disease spread during a pandemic, that would either way would be a good thing. And of course, they wouldn’t be paid liars.
Just be aware than Jonathon Haidt (who shared the tweet) has a book to sell all about demonizing the use of electronic devices. From what I’ve heard, many experts have come out and said he is exaggerating, over-interpreting or extrapolating the data etc.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if phones played a role. Looking at the timing, things take a turn for the worse right as social media took off.
Mobile devices are super addictive and super engaging in terms of attention, but low engagement in terms of requiring brainpower. People are being force-fed with short-form, instant, entertainment and the ability to immediately change once you’re bored. It’s literally training people to require immediate gratification and have shorter attention spans. People are losing the ability to be bored and they have much less opportunity for their minds to wander.
I have young kids, and I don’t let them near YouTube or social media, and I don’t have any “fun” games, videos etc on my phone. But even then, I can tell you it’s hard to get them to read like I used to because of TV, Disney+, Netflix etc. It’s also a cheat code for parenting, because when the kids are getting in your way of cooking dinner, vacuuming etc, Disney+ makes them sit quietly.
I’m new to the forum and trying to catch up. Sometimes that means that I am inadvertently directed to older posts if I haven’t made it to the end. I thought I was responding to a more recent post. That said, while late to the game, my response stands.
New research paper out:
US Falls Behind Other Countries in Avoidable Deaths
It doesn’t really matter what metric you choose. When you compare healthcare outcomes in the United States with other developed nations, we don’t stack up too well.
Among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US ranks #1 in healthcare expenditure per capita, #1 in healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP, and #1 in the percent of overweight or obesity. And that’s basically it for our superlatives.
We rank 33 out of 38 in infant mortality. We are 29 out of 38 for life expectancy at age 65, between Greece and Estonia.
We do a bit better for cancer mortality — 10th — better than Costa Rica, worse than Sweden.
People can take issue with all of these metrics. They all have their flaws, and of course none of them really captures the big question — the whole picture — which is basically “how good is our country at taking care of the health of its population?”
There’s one metric, though, that does a better job than most at answering that question: the avoidable death rate. I’ll explain exactly what that means in a minute, but suffice it to say that based on that metric, the United States is doing really, really badly.
There are two types of avoidable deaths. The first are deaths that are preventable, in theory. These are things like traffic-deaths or deaths due to smoking or obesity-related deaths or drug abuse.
The idea here is not that every single car accident is avoidable or that every single case of lung cancer in a smoker could be prevented but that, broadly, if we delivered perfect public health and perfect medical interventions, we could potentially save this life using technology available to us today. So we’ve got these deaths that we basically say we “failed to prevent”.
And there is, certainly. But look at what happens when we break down avoidable deaths by state — almost all the US states, in red, from our best-performing Minnesota to our worst-performing Mississippi, perform worse than the majority of OECD countries, in blue.
It gets worse.
From 2009 to 2019, nearly every OECD country had a decrease in avoidable mortality rates. Every single US state had an increase. Every one. While the rest of the world was saving lives, we were saving fewer. And that’s before the pandemic.
Read the full story here: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/us-falls-behind-other-countries-avoidable-deaths-2025a10006zn
But in the United States, avoidable deaths have been on the rise for more than a decade, according to a new study by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health and Harvard University, who examined mortality trends across U.S. states and 40 high-income countries. Their findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The team compared mortality data from all 50 U.S. states with data from countries in the European Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose 38 members include Australia, Japan and Iceland. They found that between 2009 to 2021, avoidable mortality in the U.S. kept getting worse, while avoidable mortality in the EU and OECD improved (with the exception of the period of time during COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2021).
The new Paywalled Paper these stories are based on:
Avoidable Mortality Across US States and High-Income Countries
Conclusions and Relevance This cross-sectional study found that the stark contrast in avoidable mortality trends between all US states compared with EU and OECD countries suggests that broad, systemic factors play a role in worsening US population health. While other countries appear to make gains in health with increases in health care spending, such an association does not exist across US states, raising questions regarding US health spending efficiency.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2831735
So the USA could avoid many deaths but doesn’t. That’s quite horrible.
Absolutely horrible… and…
When COVID Hit: A System Already in Trouble
COVID-19 amplified existing weaknesses. From 2019 to 2021, US states suffered far greater increases in avoidable deaths (median: 101.5 additional deaths per 100,000) than other countries (median: 25.8 additional deaths per 100,000).
States and countries that already had higher death rates before the pandemic generally fared worse during the crisis, revealing how existing systemic problems become more apparent when stressed.
Beyond direct COVID-19 deaths, the pandemic period saw increases in avoidable deaths from other causes, including heart disease and accidents. This pattern indicates that disruptions in care and other pandemic impacts further undermined population health.
The Money Paradox: Spending More, Getting Less
The disconnect between spending and outcomes raises fundamental questions about American healthcare. The U.S. already spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other high-income countries, yet this massive investment isn’t preventing deaths that modern healthcare systems should be able to address.
Researchers say our problems extend beyond clinical care. The evidence points to failures in addressing social factors that influence health outcomes. State-level policy differences—regarding healthcare coverage, reproductive health, taxation, social welfare programs, and other factors—have become more pronounced over the past decade, potentially contributing to the growing variation in outcomes between states.
Still, the fact that even the best-performing U.S. states lag behind most comparable countries shows the problem is national rather than merely regional issues. “There’s been a lot of discussion about preventable deaths in the U.S. such as drug-related deaths or suicides, which do account for a big proportion of this trend,” says lead study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown’s School of Public Health, in a statement. “However, we found that deaths from nearly all major categories are increasing.”
Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds
“The findings were detailed in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine by a team led by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health.
The analysis compared data from more than 73,000 adults in the U.S. and different regions of Europe, aged 50 to 85 in 2010, to determine how wealth affects a person’s chances of dying. The results revealed that people with more wealth tend to live longer than those with less wealth, especially in the U.S., where the gap between the rich and poor is much larger than in Europe.
Comparison data also showed that at every wealth level in the U.S., mortality rates were higher than those in the parts of Europe the researchers studied. The nation’s wealthiest Americans have shorter lifespans on average than the wealthiest Europeans. In some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.
U.S. life expectancy has been declining in recent years, said study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown. The study provides a more detailed picture of life expectancy across demographics in the U.S. compared to different parts of Europe, she said.
“The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the U.S. contributing to lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like stress, diet or environmental hazards,”“
Association between Wealth and Mortality in the United States and Europe
CONCLUSIONS
In cohort studies conducted in the United States and Europe, greater wealth was associated with lower mortality, and the association between wealth and mortality appeared to be more pronounced in the United States than in Europe.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMsa2408259
Related:
Curious… if Europeans start covering their security… paying into Nato… military defense and are not scalping the US on tariffs… will they be able to cover their generous safety net?
"Possibly, the more generous social safety net in Europe also exerts a protective effect on the survival of those with fewer resources, and wealth status matters less overall,”
Will see.
Maybe we will have more healthcare for our citizens.
Good point… but, they do have the advantage of a much, much more efficient healthcare system; they only spend a small percent of their GDP on healthcare compared to us, (they don’t have UnitiedHealthcare raking in billions in profit) - so the money they save on healthcare could, in theory, be spend on military defense…
Source Chart: How Much Do Countries Spend On Their Health Systems? | Statista
UNH total net income was .46% of total US healthcare expenditure in 2023.
What do want exactly? I assume it’s nationalized healthcare.
I was just using that as an example… here is an estimation on the reason for the variation spent on healthcare from ChatGPT:
what are the main dollar savings areas in healthcare expenditures that explain the differences between the percent of GDP spent on healthcare in european countries vs. the united states?
Answer:
The United States spends a significantly higher percentage of its GDP on healthcare compared to European countries. The key areas of dollar savings that explain this difference include:
1. Administrative Costs
- The U.S. healthcare system has complex billing, insurance negotiations, and administrative overhead, accounting for about 25-30% of total healthcare spending.
- European countries with single-payer or heavily regulated multi-payer systems have much lower administrative costs (often less than 10% of spending).
2. Prescription Drug Prices
- The U.S. pays significantly higher prices for prescription drugs due to lack of price negotiation by the government.
- Many European countries have government-negotiated pricing or price controls, resulting in much lower drug costs.
3. Provider Payments & Salaries
- U.S. physicians and specialists earn more on average than their European counterparts.
- European healthcare systems typically regulate provider salaries more strictly, reducing costs.
4. Hospital and Procedure Costs
- In the U.S., hospital stays, surgeries, and procedures are much more expensive due to:
- Higher labor and facility costs
- More expensive medical equipment and technology
- Fee-for-service pricing models that incentivize more treatments.
- European hospitals often receive global budgets or fixed payments for procedures, leading to lower costs.
5. Utilization and Preventive Care
- The U.S. has higher rates of expensive procedures (e.g., MRIs, surgeries) than in many European countries.
- European systems emphasize preventive care and early intervention, reducing the need for costly emergency treatments and hospitalizations.
6. Insurance Profits and Overhead
- Private insurers in the U.S. aim for profitability, leading to higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
- In contrast, public insurance systems in Europe operate at much lower overhead and prioritize cost efficiency.
7. Medical Malpractice & Defensive Medicine
- The U.S. has a high rate of medical malpractice lawsuits, leading to expensive malpractice insurance.
- This also encourages defensive medicine, where doctors order excessive tests and procedures to avoid liability.
Overall, the biggest savings in European healthcare systems come from lower administrative costs, regulated pricing, and a focus on preventive care—all of which contribute to their significantly lower healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP compared to the U.S.
I’d say prevention is a major source of cost savings. Some countries provide an annual health screening free of charge so any problems are addressed before they become too large.
You didn’t answer the question, but if you believe what you posted explains the cost difference, prettty much implies government-run healthcare. kthx
Yes, European countries are all gov’t run healthcare. I’m a capitalist, but I’m not religious about it. If capitalism doesn’t produce the best product at the lowest cost (in a given industry) then I would say something else needs to be tried. The past 30 years of healthcare seems to indicate that when it comes to price/performance the europeans get a much better deal than we do. Keeping people healthy seems to be something we could do for a fraction of the current costs.
Markets are great (generally speaking) in terms of helping allocate costs and identifying pricing, but healthcare is such an unusual market where providers have such immense power (literally life or death) it really results in very unfair markets (IMHO).
Economists can run models where costs and outcomes are assessed. And we also have real world examples of various systems, including different mixes of private and government healthcare infractructures, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, France, Germany, Italy. There is no need to silo one’s thinking into boxes with labels “OMG, gubmint healthcare!!!” and then stop thinking. One can run models and one can observe what works in practice. Pragmatism over ideology. If 100% private works, let the models and reality show it. 100% government - prove it’s the best. Or any mix of these. Let the numbers tell the story.
Well, we do know that the US system is a failure. We’re paying the most - by far - and getting relatively little in return. And not even everyone is covered. Medical bankruptcy is common. Can better be done? Looking around the world, the answer seems to be “yes”. We need to find one that would work best for the US conditions, we can’t just unthinkingly transplant a system from one country to another.
There is no need for reflexive reactions to “all government” or “all private” - show us the evidence. There are reasons why societies have decided that the government should have a primary role in certain realms. Our military is government run, but has private contractors and weapons procurement. Our law enforcement is government run, and our judiciary is goverment run. Yet nobody (well, almost nobody, lol) is suggesting that we completely privatise the military, or we should have private run police departments, or private run judicial systems - these things were tried historically, and we moved away from those models as they didn’t stand the test of history. Why should healthcare be any different? A case can easily be made that such a basic thing as health, like education, should fall under government purview. This doesn’t mean that private enterprise can’t have a role, just as it has in those other realms. Ideologically rigid positions are not practical. We need to take a hard look at what experience has shown us and then decide upon the best model - and it won’t be the current US one.