I learned something very interesting today at work. While working on a tedious (and seemingly boring) accounting project, I learned some new statistics about our great state of Oklahoma!
- OK is 44th in the nation in life expectancy according to a recent study by online science journal PLoS Medicine (or 49th depending on who you ask. My contact at work actually stated that we are currently either 49th or 50th)
- Our overall life expectancy is actually declining in OK, which puts us in a progressively worse condition than 3rd world countries (whose people don’t live as long as us overall, but are experiencing an increase in their life expectancies)
Now, I understand that someone has to be last, so why shouldn’t it be us? The disparity between #1 Hawaii, and #50 Mississippi (according to PLoS) is 6.4 years with Hawaii at 80.0 years and MS at 73.6… 6.4 years is a lotta life, don’t you think?
It becomes even more interesting when you compare the life expectancy of people in the U.S. to those of other countries. In the world, we rank 45th out of 221 countries, below most of Europe, Israel, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc…
Why? Well, of course we’re fat, lazy, etc… but really, our health care system in the U.S. sucks. It’s based on profit. Should that be the way we care for people… out of a motive of profit? Should we put effort into developing new drugs and medical advances solely for profit? (Extreme free-market Libertarians say yes. This is one reason I am not one). Of course, we need to pay doctors decently as incentive for them to put so much effort and study into their work, but do we really need to pay pharmacists $90k/year right out of school?!?! Do antiretroviral drugs (AIDS-treatment drugs) for one person really cost $7000/year, or is that the pharmaceutical equivalent of gasoline price-gouging? That’s what they cost in 1996. Do the math yourself. Should the drug companies be allowed to charge so much?!?! Do we really want to put our lives in the hands of insurance companies who can essentially determine a person’s life or death based on what they’re willing to pay for? People die all the time because their insurance company refuses to pay for treatment that could have likely saved their lives, and that they could not afford on their own.
I watched most of the documentary Sicko online a few days ago (I would post the link but I think the studio made the site take it down b/c it’s not working now). I agree with most everything in the film, and my husband is much more passionate about the issues covered than even I am. Truth is truth, regardless of who speaks it, so don’t let the director’s ridiculousness and past spinning of the truth discourage you from seeing it.
I need to stop now because I’m about to go on a massive rant about pseudoscience, which was not my intention in writing this blog and has absolutely nothing to do with the movie Sicko or the statistics I learned today. That is a completely different issue for a different day (admittedly a different day when I’m in the mood for unending hours of tedious typing, debate, and hatred from some of my closest friends and family). Something has to change in the way the United States manages its healthcare. Maybe not socialized medicine (or maybe so), but definitely something.
