“US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.”
“[T]he largest obstacle to addressing the US health disadvantage is not a lack of evidence or uncertainty about effective interventions but limited political support among both the public and policymakers to
“[T]he largest obstacle to addressing the US health disadvantage is not a lack of evidence or uncertainty about effective interventions but limited political support among both the public and policymakers to
enact the policies and commit the necessary resources to implement them.”
"There’s a certain amount of denial among the policymakers. What we were explaining ran so counter to the narrative that many politicians have of American exceptionalism and too many believe that, if
"There’s a certain amount of denial among the policymakers. What we were explaining ran so counter to the narrative that many politicians have of American exceptionalism and too many believe that, if
you’re a corporate executive or a billionaire, you’re fine.”
“Even with Covid, the US sees itself as a particular model and what happens elsewhere is kind of irrelevant. We are, after all, the greatest country in the world, the richest and the greatest with the greatest health
“Even with Covid, the US sees itself as a particular model and what happens elsewhere is kind of irrelevant. We are, after all, the greatest country in the world, the richest and the greatest with the greatest health
care system—which, of course, is not true, but people believe that.”
"[A]lthough white people living in the nation’s highest-income counties have better health outcomes than the average US citizen, even they fare worse on infant mortality, maternal mortality, and deaths after heart attacks than the average citizens of Norway, Denmark, and other +
developed countries."
"The troubling portrait of America’s health did not spur action to paint a better one. Two presidential administrations have ignored it, as has Congress, mirroring a lack of interest shown by the wider public. Still, some social scientists have not +
"The troubling portrait of America’s health did not spur action to paint a better one. Two presidential administrations have ignored it, as has Congress, mirroring a lack of interest shown by the wider public. Still, some social scientists have not +
stopped asking: What’s causing the health disadvantage? Recent work points to a surprising culprit: conservative policies."
"Life expectancy rates between states have increasingly diverged since the early 1980s, shortly after the federal government began transferring policymaking authority to the states, giving them more influence over programs like Medicaid and welfare. More recently, state-level +
power has grown via preemption laws, in which states curtail local authority over smoke-free ordinances, nutrition labeling in restaurants, and other issues. In 2000, only two states prohibited local jurisdictions from raising the minimum wage; today, 25 states do so."
"As states have gravitated to more liberal or conservative sets of policies, their life expectancy rates have taken different trajectories. For example, Connecticut and Oklahoma had the same life expectancy in 1959, but by 2017, Connecticut had gained 9.6 years while the more +
conservative Oklahoma had gained just 4.7 years. Policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment appear to be particularly influential for life expectancy."
“Mobilization of an unprecedented kind is now necessary in the United States. It requires a campaign to remove the public veil of ignorance about the evidence.”
You can explore health rankings in your state by county in this report.
countyhealthrankings.org
countyhealthrankings.org
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