Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Map of the Day: Falling Life Expectancies

Map of the Day: Falling Life Expectancies - this from"Mother Jones" - by Kevin Drum. Please follow link to original
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In lots of place in the United States, women are living shorter lives than they used to:

In 737 U.S. counties out of more than 3,000, life expectancies for women declined between 1997 and 2007. For life expectancy to decline in a developed nation is rare. Setbacks on this scale have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, according to demographers.

"There are just lots of places where things are getting worse," said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which conducted the research. "We're not keeping up."

....A key finding of the data is that "inequality appears to be growing in the U.S.," said Eileen Crimmins, a gerontologist at USC who also co-chaired the 2011 National Academies panel on life expectancies. "We are different than other countries."
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Draw your own conclusions. We really must remember that major portions of our health care system were taken away from private industry because they were not doing a good job. A prime example is Medicare, also Medicaid. I guess "the market" solved the problems by allowing private industry to shed folks they did not want. Now the REPUBLICAN-ANTI-AMERICAN-RADICALS want to turn back the clock and allow folks to DIE. TOO POOR FOR PRIVATE INSURANCE? ------ DIE!!

That's the NEW "American Way".

(oh yeah, we don't give a damn how long you live -- after all, our RELIGIOUS-RIGHT-RADICALS are having enough kids to replace you -- and anyway, if we need "skilled workers", we just import them from India, China, and anyplace else. If we need "unskilled workers", we can also import them. Your "home schooled" kids need not apply.)

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