Why Life Expectancy Can't Be Used to Judge Health Care
It just doesn’t work to compare life expectancy rates to quality of health care. There are dozens of factors involved in life expectancy. The paper reports that in America the average life expectancy is 80.6 now. The highest in the world is 86.4 in Japan.
A lot of people are trying to claim that this proves that state-run health care is better because people in those nations live longer. Well, the nation that I keep having thrown at me regarding nationalized health care is the United Kingdom. Their life expectancy is lower than for the United States. While the Daily Mail mentions life expectancy in the UK, it never divulges what it is in the UK.
Using life expectancy to judge health care is similar to using the supply of apples to determine the price of oranges. Life expectancy is more about life style than it is about health care.
Obesity in the US is much higher than in many other countries. Higher obesity rates lower life expectancy. It does so regardless of whether health care is brilliant or pathetic.
Even something as mundane as driving cars impacts life expectancy. The reality is that a lot of Europeans can’t afford to drive due to high taxes, lower wages, and higher prices for cars and gas. When I lived in Europe I traveled by train, which was difficult, inconvenient and inefficient. Now, I drive in the United States.
For every 100,000 residents in the United States 12.3 are killed in car accidents. In the UK it is only 3.59. In Sweden it 2.9; Switzerland is 4.7; Germany is 4.5; and Netherlands is 8.6. Traffic accidents lower life expectancy. But few people would argue that the health care system causes car accidents. If you increase the number of drivers you will increase the number of people who die in car accidents. Because Americans are more able to afford cars, they drive more. And the more they drive the more likely they are to be killed in car accidents. And when they are, the life expectancy rate goes down.
Crime is not caused by health care, yet crime rates directly impact life expectancy, sometimes dramatically so. According to the Daily Mail, the ten nations with the highest life expectancy rate are Japan, Spain, Switzerland, France, Australia, Korea, Israel, Finland, Sweden and Iceland. They all exceed life expectancy in the U.S. What are the murder rates in those countries? Surely murdering people lowers their life expectancy, and the higher the murder rate, the lower the life expectancy.