IPFS Menckens Ghost

More About: Healthcare

What they dare not say about U.S. life expectancy

The federally sponsored National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has ranked the USA dead last of 17 countries in life expectancy.  Get ready for an avalanche of misleading conjecture, cherry-picking of facts, and outright deception by the U.S. media.

In other words, get ready for business as usual from the uneducated, uninformed, indoctrinated, propagandist, and lazy U.S. media.  (I’ve cleaned up what I really think of them.)

You’re going to hear that our healthcare system is a mess.  While that’s true, it’s not because the USA is lacking a single-payer nationalized system, as the media believe and say.  It’s a mess because of a half-century of government meddling.

You’ll also hear that we are fatter and more violent than many other nations, which is true.

But you won’t hear the fact that we are far different in racial make-up in out native population and in our immigrant population than the other countries on the list.

Why is this relevant?  Because we have a much higher percentage of races that have worse health outcomes and dietary habits than other races.  Specifically, we have a higher percentage of blacks, as well as a higher percentage of whites of Latin American heritage. Conversely, we have a lower percentage of whites of European heritage and Asians.

Of the 16 countries that have a higher life expectancy than the USA, all 16 have a racial mix that is more than 90% European white or Asian, and  the white/Asian mix is 98% or higher for a whopping 11 of the countries. 

By contrast, about 66% of the USA population is European white, and 4.4% is Asian.   

Equally relevant, only three of the other 16 countries have a net immigration rate (immigration minus emigration) that is higher than America’s 3.62 net immigrants per 100,000 population.  They are:  Italy (4.67), where most of the immigrants are from North Africa; and Canada (5.65) and Australia (5.93), where most of the immigrants are from Asia.  The remaining 13 countries have net immigration rates that are much lower than America’s.  The lowest is Japan’s zero, the second-lowest is Finland’s .62, and the third-lowest is Germany’s 1.1.

Switzerland, which ranks first in longevity, has a net immigration rate of 1.27 immigrants per 100,000 population, versus 3.62 for the USA.  It is also 92% white and 7% Asian, and is very strict about granting citizenship.  Good luck getting into the country if you are brown-skinned, have a communicable disease, or are poor and unskilled.

I had a weekly opinion column for seven years in a big-city newspaper.  You can see from the foregoing why I no longer have the column and never made it to the big time in the mainstream media.  I’m not bright enough to play by the media's rules, especially the rule about being politically correct and factually wrong.

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Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
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