#281

" far left propagandist"? Timothy Caufield is a respected Canadian researcher on health misinformation at McGill University. There’s nothing in the Tweet to suggest he’s scoring political points: he’s reporting the data.

Read the caption: they omitted people who expressed no opinion.

The data only go up until the 2020-2021 winter vaccine season — i.e., before the highly politically polarized increase in anti-vaccine sentiment that erupted with the COVID vaccines.

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#282

** Ten Americas: a systematic analysis of life expectancy disparities in the USA**

In this systematic analysis, we defined ten mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive Americas comprising the entire US population, starting with all combinations of county and race and ethnicity, and assigning each to one of the ten Americas based on race and ethnicity and a variable combination of geographical location, metropolitan status, income, and Black–White residential segregation. We … by [which of the ten Americas], year, sex, and age, and calculated age-specific mortality rates in each of these strata. Finally, we constructed abridged life tables for each America, year, and sex, and extracted life expectancy at birth, partial life expectancy within five age groups (0–4, 5–24, 25–44, 45–64, and 65–84 years), and remaining life expectancy at age 85 years.

We defined the ten Americas as: America 1—Asian individuals; America 2—Latino individuals in other counties; America 3—White (majority), Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) individuals in other counties; America 4—White individuals in non-metropolitan and low-income Northlands; America 5—Latino individuals in the Southwest; America 6—Black individuals in other counties; America 7—Black individuals in highly segregated metropolitan areas; America 8—White individuals in low-income Appalachia and Lower Mississippi Valley; America 9—Black individuals in the non-metropolitan and low-income South; and America 10—AIAN individuals in the West.

Large disparities in life expectancy between the Americas were apparent throughout the study period but grew more substantial over time, particularly during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2000, life expectancy ranged 12·6 years (95% uncertainty interval 12·2–13·1), from 70·5 years (70·3–70·7) for America 9 to 83·1 years (82·7–83·5) for America 1. The gap between Americas with the lowest and highest life expectancies increased to 13·9 years (12·6–15·2) in 2010, 15·8 years (14·4–17·1) in 2019, 18·9 years (17·7–20·2) in 2020, and 20·4 years (19·0–21·8) in 2021. The trends over time in life expectancy varied by America, leading to changes in the ordering of the Americas over this time period. America 10 was the only America to experience substantial declines in life expectancy from 2000 to 2019, and experienced the largest declines from 2019 to 2021.

The three Black Americas (Americas 6, 7, and 9) all experienced relatively large increases in life expectancy before 2020, and thus all three had higher life expectancy than America 10 by 2006, despite starting at a lower level in 2000. By 2010, the increase in America 6 was sufficient to also overtake America 8, which had a relatively flat trend from 2000 to 2019. America 5 had relatively similar life expectancy to Americas 3 and 4 in 2000, but a faster rate of increase in life expectancy from 2000 to 2019, and thus higher life expectancy in 2019; however, America 5 experienced a much larger decline in 2020, reversing this advantage. In some cases, these trends varied substantially by sex and age group.

There were also large differences in income and educational attainment among the ten Americas, but the patterns in these variables differed from each other and from the patterns in life expectancy in some notable ways. For example, America 3 had the highest income in most years, and the highest proportion of high-school graduates in all years, but was ranked fourth or fifth in life expectancy before 2020.

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#283

The Covid skew makes the right side of the chart inaccurate.

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#284

No it doesn’t. A lot of people died, and that lowered life expectancy.

#285

I disagree. It lowered average age of death of current population. It did not change how long someone born in 2021 will live.

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#287

Perhaps the current “healthcare system” is part of the problem with poor life expectancy in the US.

Given the memes on social media this week, it seems people are saying something to this effect. Other countries may be having issues with their healthcare, but I don’t think the citizens are shooting the leaders of the companies who are ostensibly providing the healthcare…

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Cautionary Tales in Longevity Medicine (Longevity Clinic Roundtable)
#288

My immediate comment after hearing about the shooting was, I’m sure I know why the shooter did it and am in no way surprised. I’m sure millions of other people put it all together within seconds, too. And to your good point, that is a sad state of affairs.

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#289

Disgusting.

Delete this.

#290

What is disgusting? As a non-American, seeing the reactions of many Americans to the murder tells me that they hate the system. And indeed the system is to blame. There’s no bad people, there’s only bad incentives.

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#291

Insane.

20characters

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#292

What is insane? I was not referring to the murderer but to people working in the healthcare system in the US.

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#293

You need healthcare insurance for the unexpected… but then to pay in fairly and get denied unfairly because of corporation profit margins of the company… that makes a crazy amount of income. Not good.

Good insurance breaks even… like military USAA.
The military personnel was charged at a higher rate due to perceived risks. The military prople are actually less risky.

So they created their own company… USAA

When USAA makes a profit… everyone gets a dividend back. Great insurance… but you have to have military connection.

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#294

Precisely. The incentive for UnitedHealthCare is to deny claims; the more they deny, the higher their profits. Its why the CEO was being paid from $15 Million to $43 Million per year (from reports I’ve seen of the his pay online).

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#295

They also have the incentive to attract customers, so if they deny claims too often, customers will learn about it and choose competitors. However, in the US, most people are covered through employer-sponsored plans. So, that incentive is diluted and indirect compared to systems where individuals are insured directly. I also don’t know if it’s easy to switch from one insurance to another, including between states.

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#296

There are huge switching costs associated with changing health insurance costs. As you mention, mostly its impossible because its tied to your employer in the USA; so really for most people its a virtual impossibility. The company chooses its health insurance provider - and the employee take what they are given. Also - the problems of the denial rates are only truly apparent to people in any real way when you become sick (seriously sick) at which point you aren’t in a position to change health insurance companies or change your employment.

Also, many states or regions of the USA have very limited number of health insurance carriers in a given geographic area, so basically a monopoly or oligopoly situation, so the regular levels of competition (price and service) have been muted or suppressed, or eliminated from the equation.

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#297

Presumed assassin got arrested in a McDonald’s and his profile picture on YT is him posing with a happy meal. What does this mean?

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P.S. I have an alibi…

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#298

:cry:

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Ya’ll should start a gofundme for this guy.

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#299

I found this talk to be very informative:

They don’t talk much about denial of service, but there have been recent stories in the news about using AI, and contracting companies specifically to deny care.

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#300

Unfortunately, it seems prudent be skeptical of the interviewee, Dr. Dr. Saum Sutaria, because he made $18.5 the Chairman/CEO of Tenet Healthcare. He was also “a former leader in McKinsey & Company’s Healthcare and Private Equity Practices”. McKinsey is often hired by healthcare companies be find ways to increase profits.

I wasn’t then surprised when, throughout the interview, he (a) did not think there were great ways to reduce costs, and (b) subtly but very clearly kept saying that the American people largely responsible for the US having the world’s highest health care costs. In my summary, he said we can’t change the system very much because Americans prefer choice, immediate care, and do not care for their own health. All may be true, but he did not discuss the incredible opportunities in the the highly rigged US health care system.

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#301

No question that a McKinsey consultant is probably not going to criticize his current, or potential customers (any of the healthcare companies), so that is a very valid point.

But - I was confused by the statement above. I assume it was mistyped, but perhaps you could clarify.

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