The United States is a first world country yet its life expectancy is dropping. The drop is not attributable to war, climate, disease or geographical catastrophe. People are dying here faster here than in many smaller and poorer countries because the US healthcare system is run by lawyers and pharmaceutical companies not Doctors and hospitals. When visitors come here from foreign countries they are surprised and appalled to see that American television is saturated with direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. As far back as the 1980’s American pharmaceutical giants began employing lawyers to chip away at regulations banning the advertising of prescription drugs to the public through media, especially television. The efforts were successful and over the decades pharmaceutical advertising on television has become as ubiquitous as those for vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and automobiles. The last tobacco ad on television ran in 1970 on the Johnny Carson Show. Carson himself died from complications of chronic heavy smoking. Tobacco advertising was removed from television because of its devastating effectiveness at glorifying an addictive habit that attacks the body’s tissues and greatly shortens lifespans. No one has to knock on your door or make an appointment with you to hawk a product. Your television sits in the center of your home and constantly interrupts you while you are in the middle watching some sophomoric, escapist diversion. It’s all just part of the show as professionally produced drug commercials concoct creative and colorful scenarios demonstrating the wonderfulness and life-saving possibilities of the chemicals they’re pitching. They bypass your doctor who went to school for years, took a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm and has experience. Of course they mix in a few warnings that no one hears like those that regularly ignore the labels on the edge of cigarette packages. Drug companies showed up in congress years ago with a fistful of dollars and now they peddle chemicals that are worse than sewage from Chernobyl. They take advantage of people who are seriously ill and turn them into human guinea pigs. The suicide rate in the US is skyrocketing because so many are hooked on something that probably started out as television inspired opioid delivered pain management. Remember, Mexican drug cartels don’t advertise on television, they just accommodate addiction culture. The life expectancy of the world’s most powerful first world country is declining. Explain that; never mind, I just did. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/drug-overdoses-suicides-cause-drop-in-us-life-expectancy/25339202 https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20181210lifeexpectdrop.html
Yeah, it's a shame and poor allocation of resources...there's some interesting stats too about how poorly the US is rated on management of chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, both of which are super common. I've heard my doctor agree with this too that healthcare is run too much like a business and less of a service based industry. Basically we're terrible at managing very common illnesses here but we do have the best technology, so you could also look at it as we're the leaders in treating super rare illnesses and cancers but suck at blood pressure management. But definitely agree that we're spending money in the wrong places and companies are profiting more than they should
So, what stats are you going by, because without fatal injuries involved, the US has the highest life expectancy of any nation. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/11/23/the-myth-of-americans-poor-life-expectancy/
