I heard about a study that women who own horses live longer. The comment below was "if you can afford a horse you can probably afford health insurance. It isn't the horse "
Essentially yes but it's not the underlying cause, as it wouldn't also be true in places with free at the point of use healthcare.
The group "women who own horses" will, on average, be wealthier of course. However, it will contain an abnormally large group of people who can afford not to work.
Wealth is the biggest indicator of life expectancy. Adjusting for healthcare costs, the change happens when people earn enough passively to not work or significantly reduce their hours to a very small number.
Imo, the answer is "we're all forced to work ourselves into early graves, unless you can afford to live off of other people working themselves into an early grave for you."
What's more depressing than American healthcare?
Canadian conservatives replacing theirs with the American system without a fight.
When I last visited Canada a group of old men were talking at the Canadian Tire about how long it takes to see a doctor. Were saying they need to start making people pay like they do in the States.
Don't fall for that propaganda. We have both long waits and pay a ton of money in the US. It can be both. I've had bills up to $118,000 and it can take me a year to see a specialist. I can't find a primary care doctor and it takes several months to get in with a temporary nurse practitioner instead.
How did you have 118000 to pay?
Most likely the insurance covered a huge chunk of that.
It's a long story, but the TL;DR; of American healthcare is:
Healthcare providers over-inflate their costs and over-charge by orders of magnitude to insurance agencies. Why? It's because insurance agencies have whole teams and teams and teams and teams and teams (80% of insurance companies cost is administrative groups that just do this) of people that negotiate/argue that down to a reasonable amount. This means they pay a fraction of that initial bill, but they don't show that in the printout, instead they negotiate only "their part" of the bill, and send the rest they didn't negotiate down to the enrollee to cover up to their yearly maximum.
This is why you see bills for $100K+ and your amount owed is roughly $2-3K with insurance "paying" the rest.
I didn't. I put some on credit card that was required up front in hospital and the rest went into debt collection while I fought the insurance company for 2 years. Eventually I ended up paying about $12,000 I think.
But the credit cards interest was more and I have been in severe debt the past decade since. All my money goes towards debt payments and bills.
Ohh I misread your comment I though you said you were in Canada, that's why I was confused lol
It's pathetic. We are willing choosing to let it go, despite being such a huge advantage of being Canadian
Wait are you guys going down the shitter too? Illegally migrating to canada has always been my backup plan
Oh yeah, we are. Pierre says privatization is cool, and like morons, the majority of Canada believes that this rendition of trickle down economics won't line the pockets of the rich
the entire conservative agenda is to dismantle universal healthcare from the inside to prove that "it doesn't work, we should privatize it"
Someone didn't hear about the convoys
I hear this a lot but where is it happening? Definitely not in the discussion in NS.
Dont get me wrong, fuck the PCs but I havent seen any real evidence of replacing our public medical system.
It's not "our" it's per province. Alberta in my case.
It's the provinces with an outrageously wealthy upper class. BC, ~~Calgary~~ Alberta, and Ontario are chock full of rich conservatives that want to replicate the American system in Canada so that they can rival their American peers.
Heaven forbid life expectancy factors be TWO things!
Obviously easy access to healthcare AND a non corn syrup based diet are important factors in determining longevity.
Edit: Does anyone know what this category of logical fallacy is called? Basically the fallacy where a person incorrectly tries to attribute an outcome to a single cause.
In East Texas the further one is away from Houston the less their life expectancy. We all eat the same stuff, I think. The difference maxes out to 5 years average less per person, near Louisiana, but if you look at the actuary stats it’s a straight line correlation between medical center distance and how long we live, on average
This honestly is repeated for many states in the USA. The metro areas have same life expectancies as Europe and Japan, but it’s balanced out by rural lack of access and fewer preventative cares.
It is a lot easier to survive a heart attack and stroke if you can reach a hospital or comparable medical service in a reasonable amount of time.
Yes, that too, but the way it was explained to me is that high blood pressure, diabetes and easy to diagnose diseases which make up the majority. All solved by regular checkups
Causal oversimplification is a specific kind of false dilemma where conjoint possibilities are ignored.
Reductionism? Oversimplification?
Einstein supposedly said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
Yes but life expectancy has been rising in those countries despite worse diets and obesity rising. So it seems access to healthcare is a stronger factor.
It is not two things, it is several things. Life expectancy in the US is lower mainly because of one thing though.
It would be funny if the punchline wasn't the first thing you read.
Edit, realized the second comment adds nothing too, enjoy the jpeg.
The internet is just one giant network of that one annoying kid in elementary school who kept repeating jokes other people made 30 seconds ago.
We were all that kid in a way
Hey, still are!
It's good that the reply with someone repeating the joke was included in the Facebook screenshot and it's even better that this Twitter screenshot includes someone else repeating the joke
POV: MFW when there's a paywall on 70th birthday
Nobody:
The paywall my country has set up (my 70th birthday is behind it):
Paywalls: something foreign countries don’t lock 70th birthdays behind
I mean its also the better food, American food is so stuffed with pointless corn syrup that Americans who spend time in Europe consistently lose weight even if they don't change their eating habbits, the UK is going the same way so fast that I'm turning into a vegetarian because the meat in my price range is genuinely becomming cyberpunk levels of bad (It basically just tastes like starchy mush with no resemblence to meat in flavour or texture at this point)
It's both? Mediterranean and Japanese diet are said to be the healthiest diet. There is a reason why Mediterranean and Japanese are the longest lived in comparison to everyone. If anyone isn't convinced, compare with the Polynesians. They also eat lots of fish and coconuts like the Japanese, but they are some of the most obese in the world due to their wide adoption of ultra processed and fast foods.
Turns out it is all bullshit anyway. The Mediterranean and Japanese diet fads were based off reported life expectancy figures. It turns out that the longer life expectancy is due to poor government records and widespread pension fraud in these areas. A Nobel prize was awarded for uncovering these issues. A number of other studies that purported that olive oil was key to a healthy heart were later retracted for bad science.
I heard this about the Japanese super centenarians but I have never heard it about France. Interesting.
There is also the whole "red wine is good for your health" bullshit from France too...
Not being obese, sedentary and full of processed food and soda is the key IMO, plus healthcare obviously.
And apparently westernized diets are catching up with the Japanese, so much so that there are cases of people in their 90s still going strong, but taking care of their decrepit children in their 70s.
It's thousands of tiny little things, pushing and pulling lifespans up and down.
As the screenshot notes, it's both diet and access to healthcare.
It's also other lifestyle factors, like amount of walking or driving, amount of alcohol consumed, tobacco use, etc.
It's social and economic factors, like income, education levels, employment status, type of job, disability status, marital status, number of close friends.
It's mental health issues, and related statistics like suicide rates, substance abuse rates, etc.
There are environmental factors, like environmental exposure to certain hazards or pollution, sunlight exposure, altitude, certain illnesses isolated to certain climates, maybe things like localized microbiomes (although those are also correlated with foods eaten and things like that).
There are also genetic factors for individual families or potentially ethnic groups.
And perhaps the one that can't be ignored entirely is just plain old recordkeeping. Some places have high rates of people living past 100, but don't seem to have much in the way of a lifestyle or environmental explanation, and may more accurately trace back to unreliable birth records 80+ years ago such that people might be mistakenly reported as living longer than they actually did.
Also when every lead poisoned hillbilly and their toddlers don't have unfettered access to firearms, that probably brings down life expectancy a little bit.
And I'm sure the massive over reliance on cars, the form of transit with the highest mortality rate, and freeway doesn't help.
Nor the fact that every portion of food is enough to feed a small village for a week and is at least 10% corn syrup by mass.
Tbf diet is a factor, too. Not living in a food desert is a huge plus.
But seriously, the Mediterranean Diet is also a thing discussed in Europe while the north is wealthier and has better social security. Still, no one recommends the Scandinavian Diet or living without sunlight in winter. I still value the post as a meme. I don't want to be the actually guy but just provide some context.
6$ to see the doctor? That's outrageous!
Ha ha yeah I don't pay anything.
Have to pay upfront though before I get it all back (you don't have to if you are poor enough), that dental work made a hole in my account for two weeks... but getting 800€ back is sweet too.
Move more. Eat better. Have better access to medical care and no stigma in using it.
There was also an article a while back that most "blue zones" (I think they were called) are probably BS with inconsistent and bad measurement.
Avg life expectancy at birth in the US is 78.5 years, and the highest avg life expectancy in the EU is Switzerland at 83.4 years, which is a difference of 4.9 years, not 15. Metabolic disorders driven by diet are absolutely the biggest contributor to mortality in the US. You should see the disgusting shit these people are willing to put in their bodies over and over. A lot of people just don't remember not feeling shitty and are completely unaware their diet contributes to feeling bad.
Infant mortality is a big reason our life expectancy is so low. Which is connected to how hard it is to see a doctor for lower income people.
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