A wire service story caught my eye more on its headline than its content: The Truth About Record-Setting U.S. Life Expectancy

When I was born, a white male could 'expect' to live to be just under 70 years old. A white male born today can expect to live to be 76. Not too shabby IMHO. The average life expectancy, all races, both genders, is 78 for a child born in 2007.

But the article promised to tell us the Truth about these numbers. Would they finally answer the questions I have long pondered?

Nope... They only go to say they're not all that good, that 30 countries have higher spans than ours, even though we spend more on health care per person than anyone else. Argh, I should just go kill myself now and be done with it, although doing so would hurt the average numbers for everyone else, so I would in fact be hurting the country if I did this.

Here's my question - and we'll use Japans leading 83 years old and China's situation (tied with USA) as comparisons for my questions, which are just four:

Question #1
A few years back, I remember the leading cause of death of youth Black men was homicide. The article, and this was years ago, stated that *if* a black man survives till he's 25, his life expectancy rises from the 'average' of say 65 all the way to 80 or so.

My question then is - what are the average life expectancies for populations (and general) of the US as compared with those of Japan/China/Others once you remove the homicide factor? Yeah, the US may be more violent a place to live than, say, Japan. But the vast majority of us do not plan on being murdered. Thus if we are not so murdered, what is our life expectancy?

I think this is a big deal if you're going to use these expectancy numbers to rail against the US. Snuffing a life at 20 greatly skews the numbers.

Question #2
Quality of Life: The article slams the US for performing poorly, "Though the United States has by far the highest level of health care spending per capita in the world, we have one of the lowest life expectancies among developed nations" My question is not about length of life, but quality of life. Both of my grandparents are 90 years old and living happy, healthy lives. Are we comparing the medical costs of keeping them this way (heart by-pass, shoulder surgeries, knee & hip replacements, fused vertebrae, etc.) to a 90 year Chinaman living in a 1-room shack in the hills being given a daily ration of rice for years without any ability to enjoy or do anything productive?

Not saying we are, just asking the question. I am not a Sociologist. Nor am I trying to force my Western lifestyle on this hypothetical Chinaman, but you can not compare, say, Apples & Oranges. If his life is "better" to live longer than an American's and you want that life, you're more than welcome to live his lifestyle, in China or in America.

Question #3
How much do we spend not on general health care, but on end of life health care? I recently read somewhere that we spend something to the effect of 50% of a patients overall health care dollars in the last 5 years of life! We spend all this money trying to save or extend their life, which they end up losing anyway. The point being that if we spent no money after a certain point and just let them die, we could save a ton of health care dollars, well, half of them, for very marginal gains. Think "death panels" or "end of life counseling."

I am not advocating we euthanize our old folks, but resources are scarce and the only problem I have with the US Health Care system is that we, the consumer, don't pay and thus know what things cost. When my Outback needed $3,500 worth of repairs to get back to good condition recently, I scraped it and bought a new car. Now Grandpa is not a used Outback with 150,000 miles, but the point is the same. My Grandfather wants neck surgery at 91 years of age. We have told him this is a bad idea, but he still insists. If it was his money paying for it, I am *sure* he would say, "ya know, I lived a long and fruitful life, and I honestly don't need to drop $50,000 to get this neck surgery." But it's not his money and the cost of the procedure has no bearing on if he'll get the surgery or not.

Changing how we think about health care could allow our resources to be used more fruitfully. Back to the point - the fact that we spend more money on health care than any one else could simply mean we have the means and finances to do it. Good on us! That the Chinese live simple rural lives tending to rice farms in fields far away from the bustling cities, and these people have 0 health care expenses means nothing to me. Yeah, they live to be 100 years old, but I live, in my eyes, a much more enjoyable life. Luxuries... which brings me to my final Q:

Question #4
Gluttony - Who Cares? We live in the greatest, richest and most fruitful nation ever to grace this planet. We have more time on our hands than we know what to do with (i.e. how much time do you spend on Facebook, reading blogs, playing Second Life, etc.), we earn more money in a day than a rural Chinese farmer makes in a lifetime (using China again because according to the report, their life expectancy is the same as ours). I have thrown away more luxury (i.e. non-essential, not meaning gold/diamonds) things unopened than a poor 3rd world citizen will ever see in their life.

I recently read that Diabetes care, everything from the Insulin to the knee replacements (overweight) and blood pressure & heart conditions brought on by Diabetes - that Diabetes is the cause for a solid 33% of our health care dollars. 33% of Health Care money goes to Diabetes. Un-Freaking-Believeable. I believe obesity and overweight'ness is a tremendous problem in this country. But in the past few weeks I asked myself this very question #4 - Gluttony - Do we care?

Like I stated at the beginning of this section, we are rich - rich in resources, rich in finances, rich in access to food, rich in leisure time, rich in leisure activities (not meaning athletic ones, but those where you sit on your rump). If an American chooses to sit on his rump, get diabetes, become obese, spend a lot of money in health care and die an early death, do we care that China or Italy or Japan have a longer life expectancy than us?

We have plenty of young people in this country, especially with immigration, so it's not like we need workers. People with BS, MS and PhD's are unemployed, so dropping older obese folks off the end of the payrolls is certainly not a problem right now. It's not like we need to keep Pa around to tend to the farm. Let them be gluttonous and die if they want to. The only problem here is, as I have said, that this gluttonous person does not directly pay for their health care and has no idea that actual cost of their actions. Even without a state sponsored health care system, the rest of us do pay for these obese idiots choices. This is for another debate, but in the scope of Life Expectancy alone, it falls under, "Hey, we have a shorter life span than you, but we're proud of it!"

In Conclusion
It is my belief that if we don't die young by unnatural causes, we do live nearly as long as anyone else on the planet. And if we don't, it's because we make specific choices not to do so, and damn, we enjoy our life while we live it, however short is it.

Folks at LiveScience.com, we're not talking like American's die at 50 and Japanese or Italians or Chinese live to be 100. American's live to be 78 and Japanese are at the top at 83. To be honest, how much more a 'burden' (said in jest!) would it be if our old folks lived another 5 years!

This blog post (not) brought to you by Pfizer, makers of Viagra. Yes, we live in a country that does everything possible to make growing old as pleasant as possible! In the words of Yakov Smirnoff, I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!

Photo Credits, Flickr users (save one):
1 - jaydedangle: Crime Scene
2 - ecotist: Rice Farmer
3 - Greenwich Nursing Home web site (local copy)
4 - jyyne_2000: Finger Prick shaolinmastah: Scooter