Medicare is often seen as a universal safety net, a guarantee for older Americans that, after decades of work and having taxes withheld from their paychecks, the federal government will provide health insurance once they reach 65. But a new study found an increasing number of people are dying before they realize that promise.
Premature deaths among 18-to-64-year-olds rose 27 percent, going from 243 to 309 deaths per 100,000 adults between 2012 and 2022, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Health Forum. Among Black adults, the study found the increase was about 10 percentage points higher compared to white adults.
While some of the rise is attributable to deaths related to the COVID pandemic, the report revealed stark inequities in who lives long enough to collect the benefits they’ve helped fund, finding disparate outcomes not just by race but also by place. States such as West Virginia, New Mexico, and Mississippi had the nation’s highest premature-mortality rates, while Massachusetts and Minnesota fared best, the study showed.
How long someone lives, he said, is largely a component of three things: biology and genetics; individual health behaviors such as diet and exercise, and societal factors like breathing polluted air or experiencing chronic — and ultimately corrosive — stress.
“We work ourselves to death,” LaVeist said. “We live in a very stressful society, and the stress has become normative because everyone’s living under” it. Though he noted that the stress is not distributed evenly throughout the society.
Full story: More people are dying before they turn 65 (Boston Globe)