Modern Healthcare September 12, 2019
We usually use three factors to judge a nation’s health: how long people live; how well infants and their mothers do in the first year of life; and whether people have adequate health insurance.
On all three fronts, the U.S. is moving backward.
An American baby born in 2017 will live on average 78.6 years, down a tenth of a year from 2016. It’s the third consecutive year of falling longevity. The U.S. is now ranked 26th out of 35 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for life expectancy, with every other Western nation doing better and only the former members of the Soviet bloc, Mexico, Turkey and South Korea doing worse.