Healthcare and Life Expectancy
Posted by: Not The Only One in Prison, The War on Drugs, Healthcare, Latin America, Government InterferenceOn my personal MySpace page some left-wing organization called United for a Better America requested to be added to my friends’ list. I hastily decided to add them and only today did I actually check this organization’s page. I’m not too surprised by what I saw; I pretty much knew what UBA’s political views were. After all, the page’s main photo is a gif file of a red stick figure and a blue stick figure with a red check mark under the blue, and if you wait a second the image changes to read “Vote Democrat”.
But this passage on the page really got to me.
We believe that healthcare is a right. We are the richest country in the world, yet over 47 million Americans have no health insurance — that’s nearly one in six Americans. As a result, over 18,000 people die per year.
Our nation is ranked 23rd in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy for women, and 21st in life expectancy for men. Relative to other industrialized nations with universal health care, the United States ranks poorly; all while the Republicans stand on the side of big insurance companies.
Using a country’s life expectancy as an indicator of the quality of that nation’s healthcare system is a joke. This is a hollow argument that has been waged by almost every proponent of universal healthcare and was mentioned by Michael Moore in his movie Sicko, (saw the movie on bootleg) who claims that since Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans, their socialist health insurance system must be superior.
Before I dig into this topic, let me get a bit off-topic for a moment by insisting that health care is in no way a right. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there any mention of a right to healthcare.
Furthermore, I watched Sicko when it came out in June (on YouTube) and saw the ridiculous comparisons Michael Moore made between the healthcare system in the United States and the systems in France, the U.K., Canada, and (rolling eyes) Cuba.
As a Latino, I feel I must speak about the gross misrepresentation of the Cuban universal healthcare system. First of all, hundreds of Cuban immigrants who I have known have told me of the two healthcare systems in Cuba: a very nice one for white tourists and Communist Party members, and a different, crappier one for the rest of Cuba. I’ve met Cuban doctors who were too happy to have Castro send them to Guyana and other countries to work in hospitals where they can actually throw away a syringe after they use it instead of washing it and using it hundreds of times over as they do in Cuba.
Also, the World Health Organization statistics (which Sicko cites) regarding life expectancy in Cuba is not compiled by the WHO, but submitted to the WHO by the Cuban government. Why shouldn’t we believe the Cuban government? After all, communist countries aren’t known for spreading propaganda, right?
According to its Marxist-Leninist leader, atheism is the state religion (in communism, the government is God). Tell that to all the Cuban Jews as well as the tens of thousands of practitioners of Santeria on the island. It is also rumored that Castro used Santeria to win the revolution. So much for the aethist commie paradise. For more information on the deplorable conditions in Cuba, might I suggest Babalublog?
Getting back to the topic at hand…
Health insurance for all Americans does not necessarily translate into a higher life expectancy. There are many other factors that result in the low rank of life expectancy among Americans:
1) Drug abuse
One factor affecting the life expectancy in the U.S. is drug abuse. While Europe may in fact rival the U.S. in global consumption of illegal narcotics, the War on Drugs in the U.S. has resulted in a boom in the abuse of prescription drugs, which according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is second only to the consumption of marijuana. Since prescription drugs are legal to obtain and possess, (and with the outrageous criminal sentences that accompany illegal drug possession, sales and trafficking in this country) many Americans have understandably opted for a legal high. In addition, consider all the professional athletes and bodybuilders who shave years off their lives by taking steroids. I don’t care how much health insurance coverage a person may have, if they drink half a bottle of vodka and take eight painkillers it will be their last damn headache. Whether the drug of choice is crystal meth, codeine, crack or oxycodone, if you overdose, universal healthcare will not save you.
2) Violence from War on Drugs
Another factor is also a byproduct of the War on Drugs. Due to the illegality of the trade of untaxed drugs like marijuana, cocaine, crack and heroin, merchants, smugglers and suppliers (without the benefit of small claims court and various business and contract laws) must use threats of brutality and/or murder to settle disputes. Since dealers and drug cartels do not have the law to protect themselves or their enterprise, they must take justice (or their interpretation of justice) into their own hands. If you’re a crack-selling Blood and the Crips try to move into your territory by doing a drive-by on you, all the commie pinko universal healthcare coverage in the world will not save you.
3) Incarceration
Another factor is also a byproduct of the War on Drugs. According to Department of Justice statistics quoted in a previous post, 31 percent of all federal prison inmates are there because of drug-related charges. I could not find that particular statistic on the Department of Justice website, but even if one percent of inmates are there because of drugs, that’s one percent too many. Whether it’s federal or state prison or the county jail, prison is a dangerous place to be. Many people (inmates and non-inmates alike) are killed in prison every year as a result of riots, correction officer abuse, gang warfare or just plain old jail house politics. Our government cannot build enough prisons and hire enough personnel to accommodate the ever-increasing number of prisoners. The United States has one of the highest inmate populations in the world, a pretty impressive statistic considering this isn’t a dictatorship. Being an inmate, especially in federal prison, can definitely cut one’s life expectancy in half.
4) Prescription Drugs
What else affects the life expectancy in the U.S.? How we take care of our bodies is another factor. In Western Europe, a holistic approach to medicine is largely embraced as an alternative to the medication culture which permeates American society. Here in the U.S., we are constantly told that a little pill will solve our health problems. On television we are constantly bombarded with propaganda from the pharmaceutical industry about the latest FDA-approved miracle drug which takes away anxiety attacks but may give anything from migraines to liver damage to heart attacks as a side effect. I’m not completely dumping on the pharmaceutical industry; their innovations have helped people around the world fight various illnesses and have saved millions of lives. However, more and more of the newer drugs out there have some very serious side effects, some of which have actually led to death.
5) Our Health Philosophy
The general American philosophy on health care is largely based on hindsight, not foresight. We focus on what we can do to alleviate ourselves of a particular ailment instead of focusing on what we can do to prevent the ailment from hitting us in the first place. Preventative healthcare is very big outside of the U.S., particularly because many other countries don’t have the resources in their private or public sectors to support the same kind of ass-backwards health philosophy that Americans do.
6) Violent culture
Another reason that Americans may not live as long as Canadians and Europeans is because have a somewhat violent culture. As George Carlin once said, the U.S. has the only national anthem that mentions rockets and bombs. We also have a high murder rate in this country, which has nothing to do with one’s access to adequate health care. Let’s not forget manslaughter, accidents and suicide.
This country also engages in more wars and battles than most other countries, and that includes American troops killed in combat. When was the last time Canadian or French or German troops suffered casualties? And when the U.N. have gone on their “peacekeeping” missions, the majority of those troops are supplied by the United States. Remember, our mortality rate also counts those Americans who die on the battlefield as well as at home.
I think I’ve discussed enough factors affecting the life expectancy rate in the U.S., none of which are related to health care. As for infant mortality, the liberals have got me there. Maybe someone else can chime in and help me explain that particular aspect of the American people.
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