You think everyone in Great Britain is down the street from National Health?
I think that adequate access to hospital and GP/PCP is more common in Great Britain than in the United States.
Of course, partly that’s because every point in the U.K. is within 603 miles of every other point in the U.K., while there are points in the U.S. where there are no more than a few hundred other people within 15 miles of you. I suspect that there are points in the U.S. where there are no hospitals within 35 miles of you. And that’s not even including Alaska. I suspect that there are people in Alaska so far from anyone else that if someone there called for an ambulance to pick them up, it would have to be a helicopter that flies a hundred or so miles to them and then flies a hundred or so miles to bring them to a hospital.
Yes, partly due to population density and geography, but not mostly.
Medical care deserts in the United States have increased with care facilities closures, more a function of ability to get paid enough to stay open. They are rural, sure, and urban too.
For the rural side of the equation the biggest factor was if the state opted out of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Of course these are states now also having healthcare providers leave and residents not show in response to anti-choice laws.
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/18/abortion-ban-states-drop-student-residents
So getting further from UHC makes the problem of access to hospitals worse. Exactly my point.
Isn’t there like a 20 year gap between Red States and Blue States? Last I looked Vermont was the only state that had achieved the highest but red states were in the sixties while blue states were in the eighties.
“It might be worth pointing out that Americans over age 70 have access to universal healthcare.”
Not things like hearing aids. As DSeid says, there are severe limiations. And hearing aids are hella expensive. Even when you’re old you really dont get, like top quality care or anything.
The major argument I’ve seen against UHC in the US is that the top care available in the US is better than what people with UHC get. I don’t have any sources at the moment, but I’ve seen plausible evidence that this is true. Our bloated, well-funded “system” pays for stuff the rest of the world doesn’t pay for. There ARE people charged with keeping costs down in UHC systems – they are just invisible, and because their judgments apply to everyone, no one has a friend who GOT this treatment.
Note that “some people get the best available healthcare” obviously doesn’t translate into higher life expectancies or better outcomes on average. And may not even do so in a particular case. But the relationship between wealth and longevity in the US is very strong. So it probably does in many cases.
(I don’t have a reference at the moment, but a lot of research has been done on the relationship between wealth and health in the US, and the data are very solid. Wealthy people in the US get excellent healthcare.)
We’re talking about inaccessible healthcare, problematic geographie and other stuff that might, on a good day, move the needle a day (one day higher life expectancy on average).
Why not look at the lowhanging fruit.
(I’ll go first)
- Mandatory parking minimums for bars. Is it even possible to string 5 other words together to come to a worse concept?
- Right turn on red for cars – Whoever came up with that never saw a pedestrian or cyclist.
- Any exeptions for “light trucks” under CAFE. Cars are deadly enough without incentivising soccer moms and office workers to drive oversized farm vehicles.
You guys are seriously underestimating how ridiculously dangerous US roads are. Your peers are the likes of Mexico, while you spend money on roads and cars like Norway and the Netherlands.
We had an expat come here from Europe. He would get around on a bike 90% of the time in his home country and drove a tiny subcompact when he did drive.
He swore he wasn’t going to drive a massive SUV and our Fleet Services got him a Scion IQ as he requested. The second day he comes in and asks for a Ford Explorer.
So he gained 15 pounds?
Actually we were just (like 15 minutes ago) discussing that with another European expat who got here three months ago. She said that expats over 40 are warned that they will start gaining weight if they adopt an American lifestyle and diet. They refer to it as become American Shaped.
And as she was saying that someone walks in with a big cake cut into what our Dutch friend thought of as HUGE pieces!
Here’s a reference to the disparity of life expectancy by wealth in the US:
The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014 - PMC (nih.gov)
I’m having trouble linking an image so it shows in-line, but check out figure 3, linked here:
It should give you a good sense of why wealthy Americans are by and large not champing at the bit for changes.
And for perspective on other reasons that Americans die younger than people in other countries, I found this excellent article while looking for a good reference on the link between income and longevity: