Thread by @bopinion

Americans got some fantastic health news last week: U.S. cancer deaths are plunging at the fastest rate ever trib.al/SuwtW6F

The decline has been attributed to:

🚬A reduction in smoking
👩🏽‍⚕️ Advances in surgery and diagnosis
💊New and more effective medicines trib.al/SuwtW6F

This is something to cheer, but remember: Cancer isn’t the only thing that kills Americans.

In fact, the improved outcomes in oncology stand in sharp contrast with other trends in life expectancy, which has outright declined in recent years trib.al/SuwtW6F

Other common causes of death have seen increases in the mortality rate, including:

➡️Influenza
➡️Suicide
➡️Accidents
➡️Alzheimer’s
➡️Diabetes trib.al/SuwtW6F

Drug companies have flocked toward cancer and gotten a record number of oncology drugs approved. Why?

Drugmakers can stick 6-figure price tags on cancer drugs with less pushback from insurers than they get for medicines that target chronic conditions trib.al/SuwtW6F

List prices at launch routinely exceed $100,000 for a course of treatment and spending on cancer drugs more than doubled between 2013-2018 from $27.3 billion to $56.7 billion.

It’s not hard to see why drug companies favor pumping money into cancer R&D trib.al/SuwtW6F

New drug development for mental health and addiction, for example, has been glacial in comparison, even as suicides and overdoses contribute to declining U.S. life expectancy trib.al/SuwtW6F

Developers of antibiotics — which we'll probably need to ensure the survival of the human race — keep going bankrupt.

Unless the government changes incentives to better target areas of unmet need, that may not change trib.al/SuwtW6F

Public health efforts arguably deserve even more credit for cutting cancer mortality rates, including the near 30% drop in adult smoking since the 1960s.

Given the high cost of treatment in American hospitals, prevention is always a better deal trib.al/SuwtW6F

There are plenty of important intervention initiatives that deserve more funding:

🥦Reducing obesity
💉 Reducing infection rates of hepatitis C and HPV

Unfortunately, thinking ahead is rarely what the U.S. health system prioritizes or where it excels trib.al/SuwtW6F