U.S. ranks first in healthcare spending but last in life expectancy

Monday, February 18, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: healthcare spending, USA, life expectancy

(NaturalNews) If you think pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, and various other instruments of modern Western medicine are responsible for improving quality of life and increasing the average lifespan in America, think again. A report recently issued by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reveals that the U.S. spends up to 250 percent more on healthcare than most other developed nations, and yet has the lowest life expectancy rate among all these same nations.

Entitled U.S. Health in International Perspectives: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, the report compares the latest available data on mortality and health outcomes in the United States with that of 16 other so-called "peer" nations, including Japan, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada. Each of these other countries is considered to be roughly on par with the U.S. in terms of income and government structure, and each represents an important cross-section of the collective welfare of the developed world.

Based on the figures, the U.S. far outspends all other developed nations on healthcare expenditures, ranking in at a whopping $8,233 annually per person, on average. The only nation that even comes close to this figure is Norway, which spends roughly $5,388 annually per person on medical expenditures, or roughly 65 percent of what the U.S. spends. Iceland, whose economy recently made a huge comeback after its citizens forcibly dismantled the nation's corrupt central bank, only spends about $3,309 annually per person.

With all this extra money being spent on healthcare, it might be assumed that Americans are extremely healthy, and are living far longer than people from other countries. But this assumption could not be further from the truth. According to the data, the U.S. ranks last among its developed peers in terms of average lifespan, with women bearing the brunt of this disparity -- and according to the experts, life expectancy in America is only continuing to decrease.

"For many years, Americans have had a shorter life expectancy than people in almost all of the peer countries," explains a recently-published study entitled The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries. "[A]s of 2007, U.S. males lived 3.7 fewer years than Swiss males and U.S. females lived 5.2 fewer years than Japanese females."

Sick-care industry, GMOs to blame for poor health, early mortality

If America is spending tens of billions of dollars every year on healthcare, why are Americans sicker and dying earlier than people from other countries? Though neither of the two studies directly addresses this important question, there are several logical answers that cannot go unaddressed, the first being the fact that American healthcare is driven primarily by profits rather than outcomes.

A second glaring factor that mainstream medicine continues to ignore is the prevalence of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in the American food supply, which appears to be a primary cause of increased disease rates and early mortality. Virtually all of the other developed nations included in the research, after all, with the exception of Canada, either have mandatory GMO labeling laws on the books, or have instituted outright bans on GMOs.

"One of the problems clearly identified in this study is that more Americans die from drugs, including (and especially) prescription drugs, than all the other countries in this study," adds Health Impact News (HIN) about another cause of early death in America. "The medical system is by far the leading cause of death in the United States today, killing more people than heart disease or cancer."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.pbs.org

http://sites.nationalacademies.org

http://healthimpactnews.com