Re: Unprecedented US mortality far exceeds other wealthy countries

It's pretty hard to lie about life expectancies.

The UK is the 30tht on the international life expectancy list with 82.31 year. The NHS is cost effective and a bit Spartan but it does the job.

I think that some sub-populations, specifically African and Pacific Islander, are not metabolically equipped to handle the American diet rich in meats and fats and sugar and dairy products. That stuff tastes good but is poison to populations that evolved without much burgers or beer or ice cream.

The government issues death certificates, but they wouldn't get away with falsifying age at death.

"The Spirit Level" doesn't have any kind of government imprimatur. They hate it.

You do compound your absurd claims when your initial absurd claims are shown up as nonsense.

It doesn't do American much good either. The fast food industry has developed dishes that people like eating and keep on liking to eat long after they've eaten enough to satisfy the demands of their metabolism. America has an obesity epidemic. and that strikes me as the only plausible explanation.

So how come they don't die of it on their Pacific Islands?

Fast food is designed to be excessively attractive to all humans. It's a technological overkill.

Hiking to shop, lots of small loads a few times per week, instead of driving, is great. I guess that's not a good idea in parts of the country where it's brutally hot and stores are 20 miles away.

The French village concept is healthy, a lot of small shops and a lot of small shopping trips on foot every day. Fresh bread and such.

I didn't time it, but I did stop a few times to, err, enjoy the view.

It's mostly green dirt lanes and a few staircases, some up and down bits. I sometimes pick blackberries on the way home.

I remember driving through a suburb of Dallas. All flat air-conditioned ranch-style houses in an infinite matrix. There was a little kid walking alone in the blazing barren landscape. We felt sad for him.

No stairs, no slopes, nothing within walking distance, and they need a/c everywhere to survive. No wonder people get fat.

What most people will feel is boredom. Used treadmills are plentiful and cheap. What's a better long-term incentive is some really good latte half a mile away.

Driving clear across Texas, from Louisiana to New Mexico on Interstate

Some people live in places like that, but towns should have some complexity, as old natural-grown towns did. Matrix subdivisions are abominations.

This was written in 1961

The UK government over the past 10 years at least has been a shower of monumental incompetence in every area, so it's hardly surprising their health service has deteriorated so badly, along with everything else in their public sector. Introducing a National Health Service in America would be *vastly* and crushingly expensive. It couldn't be funded out of further borrowing so something like defense would have to take a major, major hit. I don't see them going down that road unless they deliberately decide they want to bankrupt the nation (which they may well do at some point it is rumoured - but that's another story).

But they put up with paying half as much again per head to a medical care system that delivers appreciably worse life expectancies.

health service has deteriorated so badly, along with everything else in their public sector.

It's always been cheaper per head than the Dutch, French and German systems and about half the price per head of the US system.

The UK sits a 30th on the internalional life expectancy league table wit 82.31 years, just ahead of Germany at 82.18 years.

It would halve the US national expenditure on medical care. Buying out the leeches that currently infest the US system would be massively expensive if they chose to go that way - those leeches are remarkably greedy - but the long term savings would be substantial.

No. The US private medical insurance business would collapse and their stock market valuation would vanish overnight

Bankrupting the private medical insurance industry would destroy a lot of perceived value, but the people who shuffle a lot more paper than the need to - most of the excess cost in the US medical system cones from over-administration in the private medical insurance schemes - could be diverted to more productive activities.

Sending them to China and putting them to work in factories there might be an option.

We need more Kaisers, true flat-fee HMOs whose incentives are to keep their clients healthy and happy. Let them compete and give poor people vouchers to let them shop around.

Public education should work the same way, vouchers and competition.

Cursitor Doom is an ignorant clown. The critical point about the US system is that is expensive - about half as much again more per head than the French, German and Dutch systems, and about twice the price per head of the NHS, which actually delivers slightly higher expectation of life in the UK (30th in the life rankings, with 82.31 years) than you see in Germany ( 31st with 82.18 years).

Shopping around and competition doesn't work in medicine. People don't know enough to do informed shopping, and they want their medical service provider to be local and familiar.

Kaiser isn't going to compete with the UK NHS on a cost per head basis.

As any right-wing doctrinaire lunatic. Parents aren't well-informed shoppers when it come to education, and they do want the service to be local.

Mostly what parents get when they buy education is a service that is skillfully promoted rather than one that delivers educational value for money.