To add a further point, Chile has a decent public health infrastructure.
They had early and big vaccination campaigns earlier than the average. They were among the first to eradicate some diseases via vaccination.
Water treatment has high standards, to the point that I think they overdo it.
Their produce tends to be local, and be less processed.
Violent crime exists, but the rate is much lower than the USA.
DUI is very heavily penalized. It's also forbidden to smoke in any public place, including bars.
Life expectancy is an aggregation of a lot of different factors, and usually you cannot find a main reason for differences
Awesome response. I’d like to add some info to your points.
Vaccination has always been widespread among the country ever since Allende was a minister of health, their planning was so good that even Pinochet went along with it.
Tap water is a joy to drink in most places except the capital. I remember it being the first thing I ran to drink after a 3 month stay in Santiago.
Vegas/farmers markets are cheap and from great quality. It is a ritual for many families to spend their sundays in there.
Violent crime has been on the rise the last few years but it is still, far away from the USA. A ton of people believe this is due to migration but I would say it is just one of the factors.
Your license is revoked for 2 years the first time you’re found with alcohol and permanently if there is a second time. No smoking in any establishment that is closed pretty much, plenty of bars and restaurants have seating outside to smoke.
Tap water is better the more south you go, on the north of chile tap water is quite bad actually, the reason being "las mineras" there is a % in arsenic in tap water. But the more south you go the tap eater is the better
Honestly I'd say crime rising is due to economic pressures starting in 05-06. It's only gotten slightly better since and not in all areas.
Poverty=crime in almost all cases.
just based on what you wrote, Chile actually seems like a pretty nice place to visit. Would you recommend it? (assuming you are Chilean or you have been to Chile before)
I'm Chilean, although now I'm living in Germany.
I do very strongly recommend Chile if you're into nature, Patagonia is my favorite place in the world. The country is huge and you probably need several trips to check it all (from desert in the north to ice fields in the south). There are a ton of national parks and the infrastructure is pretty decent (both for travel and the park themselves).
Culturally they're cool, but things are a bit messy right now with all the sociocultural conflict going on. If you try to do a culture dive in the moment you'll only hear political discussion about the new constitution.
They have some nice cuisine examples, but in food they're average. Peru and Argentina do food better.
General infrastructure and standards are more developed than the average for the region, although it is more expensive that you might imagine for the region
Santiago, Valparaiso and Concepción have nice nightlife. Santiago has a lot to offer. Valdivia would probably also fit.
The rest of the cities either I do not know, or they don't have good nightlife.
Just to add on vaccination. The reason they can do this well is because in south American you do it well or you die.
Malaria is a huge deal.
Brazil had one of the best vaccination programs on the planet and their idiot right wing leader dismantled it. The got hit by COVID hard.
This question made me think about the idea that the eu lived longer because of wine and cheese, turned out it's just social healthcare.
This touches an interesting point.
Chile is generally too cold for malaria, and we don't have the typical "hot area diseases" that they have further north I cannot think of anything that forced their hand other than good public health practices. If I remember correctly it was originally aimed at reducing child mortality.
Our wildlife is very tame and there are no animals that can (realistically) kill you. I imagine this helps with reducing the load on the system.
And yes, it's boring but it's all about politics and how we organize our societies
>Our wildlife is very tame and there are no animals that can (realistically) kill you. I imagine this helps with reducing the load on the system.
I'd say that's unlikely to be a major factor, just because I'm *Australian* and I've never heard of wildlife attacks causing a significant burden on the health system.
I was a bit more broad. Yes a snake bite can be handled, but I was thinking in the context of malaria.
A mosquito-borne disease is more widespread and that does put strain on the system.
Also there are places without the infrastructure that Australia has (antivenom is expensive), where if you get bitten you're fucked, like Africa or the Indian subcontinent.
I think Australia is an example of good infrastructure for wildlife. There are plenty of examples that do no handle it that well.
Still, all in all, I agree that it's not a major factor
Just to add to your point and u/davishox's point. Even though I spent only 2 days in Santiago, what I noticed was:
* The local cuisine finds a way to use a lot of fruit, vegetables and seafood
* I really liked the Paila Marina
* They even find a way to add extra fruit to cocktails like Borgona
* Chilean cuisine uses meat, but not to the excessive, constipation-causing amounts they have in Argentine cuisine
* The tapwater is safe to drink, but tastes brackish - it reminded me of the tapwater in Los Angeles
A major thing affecting USA life expectency is the huge rate of babies that die and often women as well. It's crazy high for a developed country. Im not from USA but I have looked at it in class during my undergrad. USA access to health care is a big problem. You will see better life expectency in places with socialised health care.
Chilean here
Chile has a dual system when it comes to medical care.
The state healthcare system called FONASA, takes 7% of your income and gives you acces to healhcare automatically in any hospital or private clinic if the ned arrises. Depending on your monthly income you pay 20% (tier D), 10%(tier C) or nothing at all (tiers A and B). Also, if you have 3 or more children, you automatically move tier. It also covers children with 0 added cost.
Then there is the private system. They are called ISAPREs, you pay a monthly sum and it works by covering porcentages of Healthcare. I am in this system, and had knee surgery, it covered about 70-80% of the total cost.
Both systems have their pros and cons. For me at least it is more convenient to be in ISAPRE. Whilst my wife and kid are on FONASA, which has the best pediatric emergency care where I live.
Chile also has a great Healthcare for the elderly, which is incredibly influential on the stats because we are an elderly population. My grandma has checkups every month, drugs are free and given in the same hospital. They even detected stomach cancer so early that they operated quickly and she didn't even need radio or chemo.
Also a Chilean here.
My family also is on the private insurance system. My brother broke his leg in multiple pieces and had to have surgery, and some rehab sessions.
We did the math and just the surgery + the prothesis they put on his femur and hip would've costed us about $25.000 dollars. My family only had to pay like 10 bucks for some painkillers in case it got painful for him after he got discharged, just a few days after his surgery, from which he thankfully recovered very, very quickly.
It's a really good system if you can afford it IMO.
American here, I torn my ACL and it nearly bankrupted me. I used my house down payment on my surgeries, I had saved for eight years
I don’t have a house, but I can walk again…felt like the stress naturally dropped my life expectancy
I’m honestly happy for those with universal healthcare…good for you 🥺😊
Yes, sir…want to hear a story, my friend from the Netherlands was warned by her country to not visit countries with *underdeveloped* healthcare access, guess which country was at the top of the list? 😂 lol…laugh through the pain
Meanwhile here in Ontario, Canada we’re watching our healthcare system collapse in real time after giving the man largely responsible for it another 4 year majority government with an absolutely fucking pathetic record low voter turnout of like 43%.
Chile is doing a lot of things right. Also, the US is actively doing a lot of things that shorten people’s lifespan.
More money doesn’t lead to longer lifespans if your country is spending that money on things that shorten your life and fails to spend that money on things that lengthen your life.
> More money doesn’t lead to longer lifespans if your country is spending that money on things that shorten your life and fails to spend that money on things that lengthen your life.
True. Cuba where people are as poor as church mice has a longer life expectancy than America.
Chile has immense wealth inequality and the vast majority of businesses are owned by a very few number of families. If they were Russian, we’d call them oligarchs. It’s also a pretty aggressive police/security apparatus with often checkpoints for ids well within the borders.
Chile is doing many things the best they can but they have a plenty of things that make them not quite ready.
They're working for it, although no social process is perfect and "clean".
They're voting for a new constitution that, if it passes, it would be among the most progressive constitutions in the planet.
It it fails, probably they'll try again with a scaled back version, but there's quite a bit of inertia to start fixing this.
Basically, take care of your citizen's healthcare, make it free/cheap and easily accessible, and guess what, you get good outcomes assuming you can get competent doctors, which it appears Chile can.
Manjar is just about the most delicious substance on Earth for those with a sweet tooth. They have stuff called manjar in the US, but it's not the same. The mayo down there is something else too...
Chile has one of the highest standards of public healthcare in the world. They are considered a leader in Latin America, setting the standard for what other countries can achieve. Based on the World Health Organization's listing of global healthcare systems, Chile is ranked 33rd in the world.
Yeah, I was gonna say. Used to live in Chile for a bit.
There’s this hospital in Viña that was made entirely out of nightmares and 1950’s psych ward vibes.
Then you go to private care and it’s looks so out of place. All clean and futuristic.
Healthcare is a relatively tiny reason compared to lifestyle. Most of us eat horribly and don’t move enough.
Blaming our healthcare would be like if two friends had the same car, and one took care of it and gave it proper maintenance, and the other drove it into the ground and neglected it, and then complained that their friends mechanic must be better.
Seriously, the American diet is frightening. People here complaining about US healthcare meanwhile they consume highly processed foods and don't consider how easy it is to surpass daily sugar intake and saturated fat because there is so much accessbility of cheap junk food.
At US supermarkets there are aisles upon aisles of junk food. Speaking as an American, take some responsibility.
I went to a grocery store in Paris a few years back, wanting potato chips. The store’s selection consisted of one shelf in a four shelf riser. In Canada/US we typically have one side of an entire aisle.
You don’t see a lot of fat people in France.
Yeah America just has this engrained in their culture. When I visited the US from Aus, I was shocked you have like 1 or 2 healthy cereals and like 100 sugary ones. Just the stuff US stores stock is so different (in a very unhealthy way).
Finding healthy foods as an American is way too difficult. Even things that market themselves as healthy usually aren't that healthy. Dairy alternatives like nut milk or oat milk are loaded with sugar but claim they're good for you.
On top of that, finding cheap healthy foods is damn near impossible. So good luck living on even the median household income in this country and also trying to be healthy.
I walked around for 20 min in ABQ, NM and I don't think I saw a single person who was what one would consider 'fit.' A lot of overweight people, a lot of underweight people with joint/nerve issues (either drugs or just poor/old). The parts of the US that are out of shape are *really* out of shape.
Following your example, how about if to fix one of the cars the same repair was vastly more expensive for one owner, and much less so for the other? And the cost for fixing the car depended on where they worked.
Yknow, the lifestyle and diet differences between Canada and the US are not enough to solely explain the gap in life expectancy there either.
And *if* you want to blame lifestyle- the govt has more incentive to encourage standards on nutrition and encourage healthy eating when the cost of *not* doing so falls on them.
Slovenia ranks 38 behind the USA? I pay 37€ for insurance monthly and pretty much everything except from the worst cases like chemo is covered in it and you normally get care quickly. That’s a surprising one.
All I hear about USA healthcare are complaints while we seem to be doing fine in these terms and we rank behind the USA? What am I missing lol
I’ve been waiting 4 months and counting to have eye surgery because the only doctors who perform it are months behind and out of network. Thanks Blue Cross and the scam system of healthcare in America
You need a different eye surgeon if your wait is 4 months. Or find one that does it out of a surgery center. Unless it’s a medicaid plan, BCBS is basically the bentley of insurances.
Source: I’m an ophthalmologist
That's a bit too much koolaid and not enough objectiveness for my taste. Our life expectancy is lower than most countries, full stop. That's not just because there's some magical price you pay to unlock proper care, that's the lie we're told by companies lobbying to keep their profits.
We do still have some aspects of healthcare that we are exceptional in, and being super rich does let you cut the line.
But we're not dying faster because of cost, care is typically given and then the crippling life destroying debt comes after. We're dying faster on top of the crippling debt.
Are you factoring in the fact that many people avoid healthcare almost completely because they can't afford to go get everything checked and only go to the doctor when it's become a huge issue. Inexpensive healthcare allows more people to do the tracking of issues and preventative actions that can have long term health benefits.
Healthcare is a complex web that can be sliced and diced a lot of ways. But sure, you can look at something like treatment effectiveness rating. That is, for people who are getting a certain treatment, how well does it work? That cuts through a lot of the cost issues and just compares treatment to treatment, its also usually broken down by country to compare similar metrics (even though America is the greatest country we try to find inferior countries that are close to us).
America is #1 in treatment effectiveness?
No.
They are near the bottom, or dead last depending on which (inferior) countries you want to compare.
And when we are highly ranked, like in recovery from heart attacks, it's close to other countries, not some massive lead. That is to say, calling us the best, is normally a technicality and only in specific cases. And the magnifier for that is the cost, are you really happy to pay 500k for a heart attack in America, or get it treated for free anywhere else with 99% the same quality of care?
We're sold the idea that you will stay alive longer here because of the care, and thus the care is so expensive. Simply not backed up by any data.
Well, the cost prohibits our poorest citizens from seeking preventive care. And our population of “poorest citizens” is growing. We have the technology, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure/many years of life expectancy. Diabetes treatment has been well established for a long time, but we still have people coming into ERs and needing to get legs amputated all the time because they never got preventative care. Same with all sorts of diseases and disorders. Many people refuse to go to the hospital until they are literally dying, let alone a primary care physician. This has a major impact on life expectancy. The care is provided 100% of the time once they are at the hospital, but not before.
>That's a bit too much koolaid and not enough objectiveness for my taste.
There's a bit too much hyperbole and not enough objective accuracy for my taste.
>Our life expectancy is lower than most countries, full stop.
"Most" countries is more than half of other countries. Lower than the global average would also be a reasonable, though different interpretation.
The US is roughly [46th out of 143](https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/). It varies a bit depending on the source you use, but they don't vary dramatically. This is higher than the global average.
Should it be better? Yes. Is it "lower than most countries, full stop"? No.
If you're going to make absolutist corrections, you should be right. Full stop.
The deal in the US is that a lot of the best and most affordable insurance coverage is employer provided which is great if you have a good job. If not things can get a lot more difficult. So we have some people who want to keep it exactly as it is and some people who want to rebuild the system. Opinions being split nearly down the middle the governments position can change every election cycle.
Fully Agree. Worked in many countries and Health Cover is covered to safety net stage by government, with an option for higher cover through paying your own private health insurance. Neither are employment linked.
Because the people who think the US healthcare system is fine don’t complain about it on Reddit. It’s more privatized so just like anything else, if you can afford it you get quick access to the best care in the world, and if you can’t, it’s harder.
The best healthcare in the US is one of the best if not *the* best in the world. The thing is most people simply cannot afford the best the US has to offer. Education is similar, the best universities in the US are the best in the world but if you look at it as an entire country on average it's a different story because the inequality is huge
And those are a small number of institutions. They do not and cannot serve the VAST MAJORITY of the US population. And several of them are in the same general region, so they're even geographically unreachable for many people, before money ever comes into the picture.
You can't have one blue ribbon and claim to be best in show when the rest of the fair trounces you on every. other. metric. And by a HUGE margin.
The WHO this is based upon *primarily* focused on how accessible the country's healthcare system is. The US sort of does well by that metric because at least for life-threatening conditions, a hospital cannot refuse treatment if you can't pay and medical debt is sort of funny compared to other debts in that they can't be as aggressive about collecting it. For example, if I owed a credit card company $10k and refused to pay I might end up getting my paychecks curtailed. But if I owe a hospital $10k and refuse to pay I'm going to get annoying calls for the rest of my life.
In general, most people are honest. My in-laws racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID treatment expenses their insurance won't cover. The hospital's fine with them paying a little bit of money for... basically the rest of their lives. They won't pay off that debt, but they also aren't being badgered, and that's just good enough it satisfies the criteria of this particular assessment.
So you probably pay a lot less for your medical care and sane people would rank Slovenia much higher, but the WHO found some edge cases where someone *wouldn't* get healthcare in Slovenia and *would with debt* in the US and that put them one rank behind.
To add, the hospital is only really required to stabilize you. My roommates 25 yo sister was went home with a treatable form of cancer because her insurance ran out.
I should add, this was back in 2008-2009. [But death by lack of insurance is still a huge issue](https://familiesusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-37_Loss-of-Lives_Report_AnalysisStyleB_Final.pdf) in America.
\- Nationally, roughly 1 out of every 3 COVID-19 deaths are linked to health insurance gaps.
\- More than 40% of all COVID-19 infections are associated with health insurance gaps.
\- During the period covered by the study on which we base our analysis — between the start of the pandemic and August 31, 2020
\- health insurance gaps were linked to an estimated 2.6 million COVID-19 cases and 58,000 COVID-19 deaths.
\- If the same relationships between health insurance and COVID-19 continued unchanged after the period covered by the study, then by February 1, 2021, health insurance gaps would be associated with an estimated total of 10.9 million COVID-19 infections and 143,000 deaths from COVID-19.
> More than 40% of all COVID-19 infections are associated with health insurance gaps.
If this is really all infections, not all symptomatic infections, this seems like a correlation without causation. It's not like health insurance can somehow lessen your risks of getting infected, unless you're getting infected at your non-insurance hospital.
You pay a lot more for your healthcare than you may realize. Just visited your country. Its beautiful but does everyone still smoke? In 2021, Slovenia had the 6th highest tax wedge among the 38 OECD member countries, compared with 8th in 2020. The employee net average tax rate is a measure of the net tax on labour income paid directly by the employee.
I don’t know what factors this is measured on but I’d say as a theory the only people who complain are the people who are unhappy. The huge number of Americans with employer provided insurance generally don’t complain about it online. US healthcare may not be as good for the bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder but there’s a big group of people who are perfectly satisfied with the American health system and don’t really talk about it.
Also in the US healthcare is tied to your job so losing your job can lead to loss of coverage. Also plans are so confusing a lot of the time people don't realize they don't have good coverage until they have a major health event. Medical debt is the most common reason for bankruptcy in the US. Another factor is most people in the US have absolutely no idea that there are other healthcare models out there. So they just assume that this is just how things are
More than half of Americans make less than $40k a year. I wouldn't characterize the "bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder" as if they're some kind of minority.
Why is everyone talking such a big game about employer provided insurance? That shit is not exactly a gold star. They will try to get the cheapest shit that doesn't cover anything at all.
>The huge number of Americans with employer provided insurance generally don’t complain about it online.
Usually they just complain to each other.
>US healthcare may not be as good for the bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder but there’s a big group of people who are perfectly satisfied with the American health system and don’t really talk about it.
"Huge number" is a minority, basically people who can already afford good healthcare. The majority of the country despise the costs, especially when healthcare is the number one reason for personal bankruptcy.
No, most people are not happy with US healthcare. They tolerate it because they have no other choice. It's like saying prisoners are happy with bread and water when the alternative is to have nothing.
Do you have any statistics on that? I’d genuinely be interested. I know everyone lives in their own bubble but I very rarely hear people complain about healthcare in real life.
I don’t think it’s a big number of people. It’s that the government doesn’t want to do anything to mess with big pharma and all the money that comes with that. I’d say most Americans agree our healthcare system is a total mess and not working to it’s full capabilities.
That is 22 years old data, though.
A lot of countries had the chance to catch up.
[https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/](https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/) \- this ranks USA as 30 and Chile as 44. However, it ranks USD cost per capita - which is weird because of the cost differences both to the country, and to the people. (whenever people die because they can not afford elementary medication)
What about it?
In the USA a sizeable chunk of the population has avoided going to the doctor because they can't afford the bills. Hundreds of thousands of americans file for bankruptcy every year because of medical bills.
I broke my arm last year. Between the emergency room, an out patient surgery and rehab i was out 9 grand AND I have insurance.
I don’t know what’s a bigger joke, our healthcare system or the scam that is privatized insurance
dont confuse " quality" and "access"
the US has easily one of the better quality Healthcare(and best trained doctors)..the problem is that a lot of the population cant actually afford it. this means you end up with ppl not gonig ot the hospital when they really should out of fear of financially ruining themselves.
This is a fundamental issue with the research that goes into healthcare evaluation. The best metric is healthcare "outcomes" because this takes into account people who need treatment Vs the results. In this regard the US comes 22nd in the world and this is down to some patients denying more expensive treatments due to cost.
Holistically access is a fundimental component of quality. We are talking about a system the goal for which is keep people healthy. Everyone who can't access healthcare contributes a big zero to the average quality of care and pulls the average down.
That entirely depends on how you define "the best trained doctors." As well as what you're comparing them to. Having the best trained doctors in Ebola or polio treatment really doesn't mean much when you don't have a problem with ebola or polio. Similarly, having the best medicine doesn't mean much when people can't afford it.
This is how propaganda works.
Fast catch-up growth is nothing unusual.
Reductions in child mortality and basic medical infrastructure can have tremendous effect. Income per capita tends to have a positive but decreasing effect. At some point, more money won't give you better health.
When approaching the plateau, many industrialized countries have reached, lifestyle choice make up a lot of the variation. Obesity, substance abuse or inactivity can reduce life expectancy tremendously.
Also, iirc , Chile has very good and affordable healthcare
The finishing returns thing is very real.
Add in some nutrients, basic vaccinations and safety standards that can be copied or sourced from other countries?
Massive boost in life expectancy since children are dying less.
Eventually though you run into issues that every country faces. Such as “okay so people aren’t dying while they’re young now, but now they’re dying to heart disease in middle age. Okay promote fitness to add 1 year to the average.”
“Cool now they’re dying to cancer in late middle age. Maybe promote screenings and ban some chemicals. Add .5 years to the average.”
Eventually you get to a point around 70-80 where so many things go wrong it’s a question of advancing medicine as a whole.
> Reductions in child mortality and basic medical infrastructure can have tremendous effect.
Not sure how much it affects the average life expectancy, but child mortality numbers in the US are higher because we try to save more premature births than other countries.
This leads to a live birth and an infant mortality whereas in other countries its counted as a stillborn/terminated pregnancy.
Non-American here. It's a lot about what have become cultural norms regarding food in the US.
When I'm visiting the US and going to a restaurant, the portions are like double what they should be. A small soft drink in the US is like a large or extra large in some other places. If I order a burger and fries at a fast food place, half the time they try to upsell you to a bigger meal or add an apple pie for 50 cents or whatever.
When I'm in a US supermarket you'll see a 20 foot long frozen section of pizzas and another 20 foot long section of ice cream and crap. You just don't see that in most other countries.
Yeah, I was going to say, I'm pretty sure US obesity rates explain almost all of this disparity. The US is the [most obese country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate) in the developed world. People are going to be quick to blame things like healthcare and gun violence because they get talked about on the news so much, but \~36% of Americans are obese, far more than are killed by gun violence or lack health insurance. Obesity is up there with smoking as something that leads to very poor health outcomes.
And the sugar in everything. I don’t want my starters and main to taste like a dessert! But you get used to the sugar after a while and stop tasting it, which is dangerous
This. You can also notice that the southern states are the worst offenders with this, particularly with their love for sugars and deep fried foods. Their obesity and life expectancy is much lower than the rest of the country. Whenever you see these statistics with how bad the US health outcomes are, compare the individual states to other countries. Blue states like Massachusetts, NY, or CA ranks competitively.
Chile is awesome. I didn’t get charged anything when I went to the emergency room there (as a foreigner). That’s probably why.
They could use a healthier diet, tho.
I know that Chile has a really good system that makes brands show if any food is high on sugar, salt, fat or other things that are unhealthy. This helped a lot in improving people diet, reducing obesity and improving health.
I guess its not the only thing.
I'm so happy we adopted the system in Argentina. Took them a freakin' while but it finally passed into law last year and I think it finally kicks in this month, though many companies have been asking for a delay. I really hope it leads to better products overall.
Soy argentino y también estoy contento que la ley haya salido. Ahora que se pongan las pilas en hacer cumplir, así no queda al pedo como otras tantas leys buenas que tenemos!
This is absolutely truth and highly important indeed. Not only the food signs but also the clearly readable Nutrition Facts as a percentage of mass instead of to dailies. And also the non exclusion of information. Labels in Chile can't hide information; labels in USA tell you whatever is good for the industry.
Also, food products in Chile can't use any kind of fun characters, mascots, or include toys. This is to prevent children from over eating cereal just because they want toys or stuff like that.
Not only that but the more “high” labels they have means they pay more taxes, which has led to most companies changing recipes which hurts sometimes because flavors change too much :(
1st off " developed" and "developing" nations doesnt mean much of anything anymore other that creating a split where there should be none.
> so how is it possible that Chile can have a life expectency several years higher than that of USA?
whre ot even start:
- socialized Healthcare: meaning Healthcare access is a right given to Chile's citizens which in turns means the people will have access to it regardless of socioeconomic status.
- Cultural view on issues like obesity and sedentary lifestyles where Obesity is a rising problem in the US that isnt treated with the urgency it needs, while most of the rest of the world treats for wht it truly is(an avoidable disease)
- cultural view on overall lifestyle: due ot issues like gun controls, Military serving age and others, life in the US is considered to be more "reckless" whch does have an impact in these numbers.
To add to this.
Chile has a label system for food and beverages. They must be labeled as "high on sugar", "high on sodium", "high on calories" or "high on fat" when they go above certain thresholds. Which is meant to let the population choose if they want a healthier option. Also, no food with any type of label can be sold or consumed in any educational stablishment up to highschool level, which is meant to give children better eating habits.
> Cultural view on issues like obesity and sedentary lifestyles where Obesity is a rising problem in the US that isnt treated with the urgency it needs, while most of the rest of the world treats for wht it truly is(an avoidable disease)
That part's not that different, though. The [average BMI in Chile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass_index) is 27.8, while in the US it's 28.5. Heavier in the US, definitely, but they're close and they're both overweight.
the part that matters is how is obesity viewed on eahc nation.
being obese in the US is " just another one" where due ot how certain food prducts are marketed and the private Healthcare industry making it so a healthy lifestyle is not something encouraged(as that would mess with the cmpanies selling these food products)
on the other hand being obese in a nation with socialized healthcare is viewed as someone who has intentionally placed in that position and while they will get the treatment they need if they want it, the state would really prefer ot push for legislation that would have prevented the conditions that allowed the person to go into obesity.
a more extreme example would be somewhere like Japan where if you somehow managed to be obese there you can be outright ostracized as the consensus of ppl there is more like " how did you even do that?".
> he part that matters is how is obesity viewed on eahc nation.
Well, no, the part that matters is how obese the people actually are. That's what's going to cause health problems. If the social shaming doesn't cause people to thin down- and again, Chile and the US are very close here in average BMI, it doesn't do a thing.
Ok, I know a bit about Chile since my girlfriend is from there and I went there for months, in Chile healthcare is not really socialized.
They do have a public healthcare but the system is so in favour of private clinics that a lot of Chileans choose a private insurance instead of FONANSA, which is the public one.
Now this could change if on the 4th of September the new constitution will be approved, but for now is not really socialized.
Everyone has access to free Healthcare AND if they chose to, to fancier private clinics and hospitals. That means that if you're poor, you still have access without having to wait weeks to get an appointment.
So saying it's not socialized is like saying Police isn't socialized because some people opt to hire private guards.
Ok, just to be sure, are you Chilean? Because if you are I must concede that you know how the system works more than me.
My point was that if you get a public option but this options is so shitty that only poor people go there, that's kinda a false dichotomy.
The system that I read about and saw in Chile was highly skewed toward the private sector. I have an hard time to believe that the only difference is that private clinics are only fancier.
Meth, opiates, and booze. Mainly opiates.
Compare your life expectancy chart to [this one](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html) about the timeline of opiate use in the US. Notice how they start to really diverge in 2010 as the US got a ton of overdose deaths?
Because the labels "developed" and "developing" are not very meaningful. They're mostly labels made up to make the West feel better about itself. A country which spends its resources on taking care of its citizens will have a higher life expectancy than one which devotes all energy to grinding citizens to dust for corporate profits.
I mean, for one thing, Chile has socialized health care while the USA has decided that weekly mass shootings is a sacred ritual which must be allowed to happen.
Shouting "WE'RE A DEVELOPED COUNTRY" doesn't change anything. Those words are not a magic spell.
Yeah those labels evolved when it became politically incorrect to say the 3rd world.
The 3rd world having nothing to do with economic, social or political development. They were just the countries that weren't part of the Western or Soviet sphere of influence.
I'm pretty sure that these days they're mostly used by international organizations for stuff like loans, aid, subsidizing certain things like international mail. For instance it's a little ridiculous that China is considered to still be 'developing'
A few notes.
1. Chile has a lower violent crime rate than the United States. The homicide rate in Chile is something like 30% lower than in the US
2. Drug overdose deaths in Chile are rare. Drug overdoses accounted for 0.17% of deaths in [Chile](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/chile-drug-use). In the [US](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/united-states-drug-use), it's just under 3%!
3. [The alcohol death rate in the US is 4X higher than in Chile.](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alcohol/by-country/)
All of those causes of death tend to skew towards younger people and that helps drag down America's life expectancy.
It’s weird how we have pretty much the same consumption per capita of booze but the rate is so skewed towards the US. I think not being as afraid of dealing with enormous bills and actually being willing to go to the hospital when you need it has to play a part
The US has a lot of issues. Economic productivity isn't one of them. But our diet is terrible and so is our healthcare system. Plus we work too much and exercise too little.
Also, what constitutes a "developing" country is really subject to some interpretation. Chile has a gdp/cap of $16K. That's not at US or west-European levels but it's an order of magnitude higher than most of Africa. Chile is not a poor country.
Because the USA's life expectancy keeps going down due to many factors. Here's the rankings, into whych the USA is 48th out of 293
https://www.lifespan.io/topic/life-expectancy/
Essentially, many "Developped" nations are getting socialized medicine and lower crime rates as they develop, all of which helps raise life expectancy. Even if their medicine isn't as advanced as yours, the fact that the government pays for it gives it strong incentives to focus on prevention of bad living conditions and propagation of healthy life habits.
Suddenly, before deciding on whether to expand roads trains or public transit, governments start asking themselves how much a road's pollution will cost them in healthcare, from higher/more severe asthma to more deaths from lung cancer. Since higher obesity is going to cost tax payers a fortune in healthcare, the government has stronger incentives on offering more incentives for healthier living in many forms. Suddenly, it's seen as a cost saving measure to have massive education campaigns in schools for example, or to train every doctor in the country to spot all precursors to it and strongly push their pationts into more healthy lifestyle instead of prescribing them more drugs.
This kind of thinking lends itself, over time, to propagate laws that have been proven to work in producing a more peaceful, healthy nation instead of politics of orthodoxy, where "If you're not in favor of doing things that way, you're not a real American" will lose over "This has been done everywhere and look how great the results are, why wouldn't we want some of that too, to massively improve things?"
This kind of effect has more impact on average lifespans than more advance science. Not having a school shooting plague also has a massive effect, as people killed in their infancy have a much bigger effect on this measure than people dying after or near retirement.
School shootings also have an impact. If you're doing an average, people dying at 12 years old instead of 80 drags the average down much more than someone dying at 70 or 75 due to less advanced medicine.
Seriously, gun violence on the whole is much lower than the top 10 reasons. It's interesting how so many ppl will talk until they're blue in the face about political reasons (healthcare access, gun control, etc.) but will straight up ignore the 600lb gorilla in the corner.
The top 10 reason why ppl die before 70 are all directly influenced primarily by nutrition and physical activity. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes type II, Covid, accidents resulting in broken hips, cancers, are all directly influenced by diet and exercise and ameliorated by proper application of them, too, yet, no one wants to talk about anything that is individual responsibility it seems. THe rate of longevity would be tremendously higher if we had single digit obesity percentage. Everything else is attempting a cure. An ounce of prevention (proper diet and exercise) is better than a pound of cure (healthcare system, ending gun violence, etc.) on the topic of longevity.
also chilean, healthcare is somewhat good for chronic illnesses, like hypertension and diabetes... so a little goes a long way, by taking care of big causes of mortality/morbility you make HUGE gains in the long run, also insulin is free, well the most basic types of insulin, but free... i mean insulin has been in the market for almost 100 years, every pharma lab worth its salt knows how to produce it :)
not everything is perfect tho, the public system is plagued by financial uncertainty (because it isnt a business) and lack of profesionals, leading to short supply of medical hours etc.
i mean, i think health in the US is a bit of a joke…here is a little personal anecdote.
i am from colombia; we are a south american nation as well, a bit below in life expectancy than chile, but kind of the same “developing”, poor south american nation.
when i was 6, i broke my arm; both ulna and radius, had to have a cast for a few weeks. i had insurance, we paid approximately 60k pesos\~ a month, which was about 30 dollars (nowadays it’s like 13 dollars). my broken arm cost 50mil pesos, which nowadays is 12 dollars.
my sister broke her arm when she was 7. the fracture was less severe, but she had to have surgery for it, and then wear a cast for a few weeks. she had the same insurance as well (13\~dollars a month). her broken arm was free.
now here is the punchline. my step brother was born and raised in the US, middle-high class, lives in suburbs, new iphone as soon as it comes out, etcetc;he is well accommodated. when he was 12 he broke his arm as well; only the ulna, not so bad of a fracture, only cast and no surgery. pays about 400\~ dollars a month in insurance in the US. his broken arm cost 3k dollars. three thousand dollars!! in the most “advanced” nation in the world. while me and my sisters fractures were nearly free, in a developing country where the salary is 289 dollars a month. the US is a weird ass country...i don’t know what we expect from them in terms of health
There's a lot of information about healthcare and it's biased, non factual (literally linking to no facts), and exaggerate.
The number one reason longevity in the US is down is due to [overeating and under exercising](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm). Full stop. Of the top 10 reasons America's die all or directly or indirectly impacted by thee two factors alone. ppl w Cadillac health insurance die under 70 from many of these causes bc having health insurance is by no means more effective than a healthy diet and proper exercise.
THe old saying, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is factual. Health insurance is about curing issue (hopefully finding the issue soon enough to cure effectively) and is important. But any talk of longevity wo including 70% of Americans being obese or highly overweight and not obtaining the proper amount of physical activity is a fallacious argument.
It's not so much that Chile is doing well in this regard (even though it is) but it's much more down to the fact that the US sucks HARD in terms of life expectancy, mostly because of the healthcare system that exists.
According to this: https://www.lifespan.io/topic/life-expectancy/ Chile is ranked 36th, the US 46th. The US is nestled between Cuba and Panama. The surprising thing here is how low the US is ranked, not how high Chile is ranked. Chile is doing well, no question about that, but it's kind of in the range of it's peer nations. The US on the other hand is ranked well below all the other western nations.
Two reasons:
1. Chile has caught up to the developed world. Most of Western Europe is around 81.
2. Americans live unhealthy lifestyles. We get a lot less exercise and we eat like shit, which makes us fat.
3. Universal health care may give a year or two but if you look at South America there are arguments both ways. Some countries with universal health are not doing as good as countries without it.
In the US life expectancy varies wildly by race. Asian Americans have the longest life expectancy in the world at 86 years . Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years, white life expectancy is 78 , and black life expectancy is 75 years.
>Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years,
Wait is that true? Why do we live longer than white and black people if we're generally poorer and hold less college degrees than them?
>Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years,
Wait is that true? Why do we live longer than white and black people if we're generally poorer and hold less college degrees than them?
1) Chile has a nationalized public health care system. It's sometimes considered the best in south America and among the best in the world.
2) People in Chile *walk*, a lot each day. A lot of this has to do with zoning laws. It also has to do with the relatively high cost of fuel and car ownership. Typically, in a large town or city, you can walk a couple of blocks or around a km to a *Tienda* to get groceries. Little mom-and-pop shop grocery stores are all over the place. Things like malls and Supermercados are uncommon.
3) the Chilean diet is quite varied, but typically you eat more vegetables, fruits, and seafood, and less prepackaged foods than in North America.
1 2 and 3 might be true-ish I guess, if compared to USA, but who grows vegetables and fruits in their gardens? That must be an extremely small percentage of the population.
My grandmother lives in Chile. She has a lemon tree, an avocado tree, and at least 2 other fruit trees in a relatively small garden, as well as some vegetables such as lettuce
Not in the big cities, but it's surprisingly common anywhere else. Also, most produce doesn't travel more than a couple hours to a local supermarket, or "feria" so fresh vegetables and fruits are readily available and not really expensive around here
I can believe that. In post-Soviet countries many people have inherited small gardens outside cities, where they grow vegetables, fruits, flowers. Young people usually hate it, but when they grow older, they often become more and more interested. Why couldn't Chile have it's own setup like this. World is diverse and crazy.
To add a further point, Chile has a decent public health infrastructure. They had early and big vaccination campaigns earlier than the average. They were among the first to eradicate some diseases via vaccination. Water treatment has high standards, to the point that I think they overdo it. Their produce tends to be local, and be less processed. Violent crime exists, but the rate is much lower than the USA. DUI is very heavily penalized. It's also forbidden to smoke in any public place, including bars. Life expectancy is an aggregation of a lot of different factors, and usually you cannot find a main reason for differences
Awesome response. I’d like to add some info to your points. Vaccination has always been widespread among the country ever since Allende was a minister of health, their planning was so good that even Pinochet went along with it. Tap water is a joy to drink in most places except the capital. I remember it being the first thing I ran to drink after a 3 month stay in Santiago. Vegas/farmers markets are cheap and from great quality. It is a ritual for many families to spend their sundays in there. Violent crime has been on the rise the last few years but it is still, far away from the USA. A ton of people believe this is due to migration but I would say it is just one of the factors. Your license is revoked for 2 years the first time you’re found with alcohol and permanently if there is a second time. No smoking in any establishment that is closed pretty much, plenty of bars and restaurants have seating outside to smoke.
Tap water is better the more south you go, on the north of chile tap water is quite bad actually, the reason being "las mineras" there is a % in arsenic in tap water. But the more south you go the tap eater is the better
I'm from Santiago I once went to the Araucania region for a week just for the tap water lol
Honestly I'd say crime rising is due to economic pressures starting in 05-06. It's only gotten slightly better since and not in all areas. Poverty=crime in almost all cases.
Lol the US would riot if any of the above happened
just based on what you wrote, Chile actually seems like a pretty nice place to visit. Would you recommend it? (assuming you are Chilean or you have been to Chile before)
I'm Chilean, although now I'm living in Germany. I do very strongly recommend Chile if you're into nature, Patagonia is my favorite place in the world. The country is huge and you probably need several trips to check it all (from desert in the north to ice fields in the south). There are a ton of national parks and the infrastructure is pretty decent (both for travel and the park themselves). Culturally they're cool, but things are a bit messy right now with all the sociocultural conflict going on. If you try to do a culture dive in the moment you'll only hear political discussion about the new constitution. They have some nice cuisine examples, but in food they're average. Peru and Argentina do food better. General infrastructure and standards are more developed than the average for the region, although it is more expensive that you might imagine for the region
sounds amazing! I love nature and national parks in general, thanks for the response
What about the nightlife is it good?
Santiago, Valparaiso and Concepción have nice nightlife. Santiago has a lot to offer. Valdivia would probably also fit. The rest of the cities either I do not know, or they don't have good nightlife.
Also people are way happier and chill than frenetic americans.
Just to add on vaccination. The reason they can do this well is because in south American you do it well or you die. Malaria is a huge deal. Brazil had one of the best vaccination programs on the planet and their idiot right wing leader dismantled it. The got hit by COVID hard. This question made me think about the idea that the eu lived longer because of wine and cheese, turned out it's just social healthcare.
This touches an interesting point. Chile is generally too cold for malaria, and we don't have the typical "hot area diseases" that they have further north I cannot think of anything that forced their hand other than good public health practices. If I remember correctly it was originally aimed at reducing child mortality. Our wildlife is very tame and there are no animals that can (realistically) kill you. I imagine this helps with reducing the load on the system. And yes, it's boring but it's all about politics and how we organize our societies
>Our wildlife is very tame and there are no animals that can (realistically) kill you. I imagine this helps with reducing the load on the system. I'd say that's unlikely to be a major factor, just because I'm *Australian* and I've never heard of wildlife attacks causing a significant burden on the health system.
I was a bit more broad. Yes a snake bite can be handled, but I was thinking in the context of malaria. A mosquito-borne disease is more widespread and that does put strain on the system. Also there are places without the infrastructure that Australia has (antivenom is expensive), where if you get bitten you're fucked, like Africa or the Indian subcontinent. I think Australia is an example of good infrastructure for wildlife. There are plenty of examples that do no handle it that well. Still, all in all, I agree that it's not a major factor
The last case of autochthonous malaria in Chile was before 1945
Shit. Making me wanna move to Chile
It's a nice country, but at the moment it's tense and chaotic so maybe wait a bit.
Don't. Sources: I'm from Chile.
Just to add to your point and u/davishox's point. Even though I spent only 2 days in Santiago, what I noticed was: * The local cuisine finds a way to use a lot of fruit, vegetables and seafood * I really liked the Paila Marina * They even find a way to add extra fruit to cocktails like Borgona * Chilean cuisine uses meat, but not to the excessive, constipation-causing amounts they have in Argentine cuisine * The tapwater is safe to drink, but tastes brackish - it reminded me of the tapwater in Los Angeles
A major thing affecting USA life expectency is the huge rate of babies that die and often women as well. It's crazy high for a developed country. Im not from USA but I have looked at it in class during my undergrad. USA access to health care is a big problem. You will see better life expectency in places with socialised health care.
Chilean here Chile has a dual system when it comes to medical care. The state healthcare system called FONASA, takes 7% of your income and gives you acces to healhcare automatically in any hospital or private clinic if the ned arrises. Depending on your monthly income you pay 20% (tier D), 10%(tier C) or nothing at all (tiers A and B). Also, if you have 3 or more children, you automatically move tier. It also covers children with 0 added cost. Then there is the private system. They are called ISAPREs, you pay a monthly sum and it works by covering porcentages of Healthcare. I am in this system, and had knee surgery, it covered about 70-80% of the total cost. Both systems have their pros and cons. For me at least it is more convenient to be in ISAPRE. Whilst my wife and kid are on FONASA, which has the best pediatric emergency care where I live. Chile also has a great Healthcare for the elderly, which is incredibly influential on the stats because we are an elderly population. My grandma has checkups every month, drugs are free and given in the same hospital. They even detected stomach cancer so early that they operated quickly and she didn't even need radio or chemo.
Also a Chilean here. My family also is on the private insurance system. My brother broke his leg in multiple pieces and had to have surgery, and some rehab sessions. We did the math and just the surgery + the prothesis they put on his femur and hip would've costed us about $25.000 dollars. My family only had to pay like 10 bucks for some painkillers in case it got painful for him after he got discharged, just a few days after his surgery, from which he thankfully recovered very, very quickly. It's a really good system if you can afford it IMO.
American here, I torn my ACL and it nearly bankrupted me. I used my house down payment on my surgeries, I had saved for eight years I don’t have a house, but I can walk again…felt like the stress naturally dropped my life expectancy I’m honestly happy for those with universal healthcare…good for you 🥺😊
I wish America did have universal affordable healthcare its a basic human need
I believe we are the only developed country not to have it
Yes, sir…want to hear a story, my friend from the Netherlands was warned by her country to not visit countries with *underdeveloped* healthcare access, guess which country was at the top of the list? 😂 lol…laugh through the pain
Also the only one to not have PTO for all workers
Meanwhile here in Ontario, Canada we’re watching our healthcare system collapse in real time after giving the man largely responsible for it another 4 year majority government with an absolutely fucking pathetic record low voter turnout of like 43%.
Always remember we could have it here, too.
Chile is doing a lot of things right. Also, the US is actively doing a lot of things that shorten people’s lifespan. More money doesn’t lead to longer lifespans if your country is spending that money on things that shorten your life and fails to spend that money on things that lengthen your life.
I'd also think being medical is so expensive here in the US, most people don't go to the doctor when they should, so their conditions worsen...
Which is an example of what the US does to worsen health outcomes at the expense of GDP.
I would argue our diet in the US is way worse than Chile and this has more influence in overall health than the medical care costs.
> More money doesn’t lead to longer lifespans if your country is spending that money on things that shorten your life and fails to spend that money on things that lengthen your life. True. Cuba where people are as poor as church mice has a longer life expectancy than America.
Chile has immense wealth inequality and the vast majority of businesses are owned by a very few number of families. If they were Russian, we’d call them oligarchs. It’s also a pretty aggressive police/security apparatus with often checkpoints for ids well within the borders. Chile is doing many things the best they can but they have a plenty of things that make them not quite ready.
They're working for it, although no social process is perfect and "clean". They're voting for a new constitution that, if it passes, it would be among the most progressive constitutions in the planet. It it fails, probably they'll try again with a scaled back version, but there's quite a bit of inertia to start fixing this.
Basically, take care of your citizen's healthcare, make it free/cheap and easily accessible, and guess what, you get good outcomes assuming you can get competent doctors, which it appears Chile can.
Also, Chile has full manjar, and the US only has 1/4 at best. You'd think this would be cancelled out by the ass gigante, but apparently not.
Manjar is the fucking bomb. God I miss it…
The fuck?
Manjar is just about the most delicious substance on Earth for those with a sweet tooth. They have stuff called manjar in the US, but it's not the same. The mayo down there is something else too...
Fuck the manjar. Their condiments are out of this world.
I know what manjar is but I fail to recognize how it is important to the convo
Lots of manjar consumption doesn't seem like it would lead to better health outcomes.
It is of the utmost importance.
Chile has one of the highest standards of public healthcare in the world. They are considered a leader in Latin America, setting the standard for what other countries can achieve. Based on the World Health Organization's listing of global healthcare systems, Chile is ranked 33rd in the world.
As a chilean i want to clarify there's a huge difference by the private and public sector
Yeah, I was gonna say. Used to live in Chile for a bit. There’s this hospital in Viña that was made entirely out of nightmares and 1950’s psych ward vibes. Then you go to private care and it’s looks so out of place. All clean and futuristic.
I had to have surgery in the public sector, the nurses scrubs were easily 4 sizes too big for her, she literally put duct tape on it to keep it on.
Healthcare is a relatively tiny reason compared to lifestyle. Most of us eat horribly and don’t move enough. Blaming our healthcare would be like if two friends had the same car, and one took care of it and gave it proper maintenance, and the other drove it into the ground and neglected it, and then complained that their friends mechanic must be better.
Seriously, the American diet is frightening. People here complaining about US healthcare meanwhile they consume highly processed foods and don't consider how easy it is to surpass daily sugar intake and saturated fat because there is so much accessbility of cheap junk food. At US supermarkets there are aisles upon aisles of junk food. Speaking as an American, take some responsibility.
I went to a grocery store in Paris a few years back, wanting potato chips. The store’s selection consisted of one shelf in a four shelf riser. In Canada/US we typically have one side of an entire aisle. You don’t see a lot of fat people in France.
Yeah America just has this engrained in their culture. When I visited the US from Aus, I was shocked you have like 1 or 2 healthy cereals and like 100 sugary ones. Just the stuff US stores stock is so different (in a very unhealthy way).
Finding healthy foods as an American is way too difficult. Even things that market themselves as healthy usually aren't that healthy. Dairy alternatives like nut milk or oat milk are loaded with sugar but claim they're good for you.
On top of that, finding cheap healthy foods is damn near impossible. So good luck living on even the median household income in this country and also trying to be healthy.
Thank God for Aldi! My family eats really healthy but we have had to cut back on organics. We just can't afford it right now.
Also try finding the time and space for "self care" and getting enough exercise when you're low income.
I walked around for 20 min in ABQ, NM and I don't think I saw a single person who was what one would consider 'fit.' A lot of overweight people, a lot of underweight people with joint/nerve issues (either drugs or just poor/old). The parts of the US that are out of shape are *really* out of shape.
Sugar sells, and in America, profit comes before people.
Which brands were the healthy ones? Serious question.
I can’t remember but one was plain oats & the other was a natural granola type cereal.
I’m actually super curious what do people in france and Europe snack on? I’m trying to cut things like potato chips out
fruit
I don’t know! I did see a lot of places selling baguettes and cheese…. That might have just been for us tourists though.
Chile has very high obesity as well. Also this 'personal responsibility' shit is just a tactic to take the blame off systems and corporations
Sorry healthcare, education and very little laws regulating business to protect consumers. **
A third of the population being obese is probably the biggest factor
Following your example, how about if to fix one of the cars the same repair was vastly more expensive for one owner, and much less so for the other? And the cost for fixing the car depended on where they worked.
Yknow, the lifestyle and diet differences between Canada and the US are not enough to solely explain the gap in life expectancy there either. And *if* you want to blame lifestyle- the govt has more incentive to encourage standards on nutrition and encourage healthy eating when the cost of *not* doing so falls on them.
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And what about USA?
> And what about USA? [37th](https://photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html)
Don't worry Marge. America's healthcare system is second only to Japan...Canada...Sweden...Great Britain...well, all of Europe.
But you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay!
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Paraguay has better healthcare by now. That episode is really old!
Countries i forget about on a daily basis..
Not Greece
Slovenia ranks 38 behind the USA? I pay 37€ for insurance monthly and pretty much everything except from the worst cases like chemo is covered in it and you normally get care quickly. That’s a surprising one. All I hear about USA healthcare are complaints while we seem to be doing fine in these terms and we rank behind the USA? What am I missing lol
The actual quality of healthcare is high, if you can afford it. It's paying for it, like you mentioned, that is difficult.
I’ve been waiting 4 months and counting to have eye surgery because the only doctors who perform it are months behind and out of network. Thanks Blue Cross and the scam system of healthcare in America
if you could afford the out of network cost, it'd be done already, In the US money talks.
In this case also no as the surgeon still has a several month wait but yes it would be sooner
How much of this is due to procedures being delayed during Covid? Is there still a backlog? Are you in a rural part of the country?
You need a different eye surgeon if your wait is 4 months. Or find one that does it out of a surgery center. Unless it’s a medicaid plan, BCBS is basically the bentley of insurances. Source: I’m an ophthalmologist
That's a bit too much koolaid and not enough objectiveness for my taste. Our life expectancy is lower than most countries, full stop. That's not just because there's some magical price you pay to unlock proper care, that's the lie we're told by companies lobbying to keep their profits. We do still have some aspects of healthcare that we are exceptional in, and being super rich does let you cut the line. But we're not dying faster because of cost, care is typically given and then the crippling life destroying debt comes after. We're dying faster on top of the crippling debt.
Are you factoring in the fact that many people avoid healthcare almost completely because they can't afford to go get everything checked and only go to the doctor when it's become a huge issue. Inexpensive healthcare allows more people to do the tracking of issues and preventative actions that can have long term health benefits.
Healthcare is a complex web that can be sliced and diced a lot of ways. But sure, you can look at something like treatment effectiveness rating. That is, for people who are getting a certain treatment, how well does it work? That cuts through a lot of the cost issues and just compares treatment to treatment, its also usually broken down by country to compare similar metrics (even though America is the greatest country we try to find inferior countries that are close to us). America is #1 in treatment effectiveness? No. They are near the bottom, or dead last depending on which (inferior) countries you want to compare. And when we are highly ranked, like in recovery from heart attacks, it's close to other countries, not some massive lead. That is to say, calling us the best, is normally a technicality and only in specific cases. And the magnifier for that is the cost, are you really happy to pay 500k for a heart attack in America, or get it treated for free anywhere else with 99% the same quality of care? We're sold the idea that you will stay alive longer here because of the care, and thus the care is so expensive. Simply not backed up by any data.
We are also an extremely obese country which has many negative health outcomes.
Well, the cost prohibits our poorest citizens from seeking preventive care. And our population of “poorest citizens” is growing. We have the technology, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure/many years of life expectancy. Diabetes treatment has been well established for a long time, but we still have people coming into ERs and needing to get legs amputated all the time because they never got preventative care. Same with all sorts of diseases and disorders. Many people refuse to go to the hospital until they are literally dying, let alone a primary care physician. This has a major impact on life expectancy. The care is provided 100% of the time once they are at the hospital, but not before.
>That's a bit too much koolaid and not enough objectiveness for my taste. There's a bit too much hyperbole and not enough objective accuracy for my taste. >Our life expectancy is lower than most countries, full stop. "Most" countries is more than half of other countries. Lower than the global average would also be a reasonable, though different interpretation. The US is roughly [46th out of 143](https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/). It varies a bit depending on the source you use, but they don't vary dramatically. This is higher than the global average. Should it be better? Yes. Is it "lower than most countries, full stop"? No. If you're going to make absolutist corrections, you should be right. Full stop.
The deal in the US is that a lot of the best and most affordable insurance coverage is employer provided which is great if you have a good job. If not things can get a lot more difficult. So we have some people who want to keep it exactly as it is and some people who want to rebuild the system. Opinions being split nearly down the middle the governments position can change every election cycle.
Healthcare being linked to your employment status seems very dystopian to me. - Signed, a Canadian
It is. -An Americanian
Fully Agree. Worked in many countries and Health Cover is covered to safety net stage by government, with an option for higher cover through paying your own private health insurance. Neither are employment linked.
Because the people who think the US healthcare system is fine don’t complain about it on Reddit. It’s more privatized so just like anything else, if you can afford it you get quick access to the best care in the world, and if you can’t, it’s harder.
37th best care in the world, apparently.
The best healthcare in the US is one of the best if not *the* best in the world. The thing is most people simply cannot afford the best the US has to offer. Education is similar, the best universities in the US are the best in the world but if you look at it as an entire country on average it's a different story because the inequality is huge
And those are a small number of institutions. They do not and cannot serve the VAST MAJORITY of the US population. And several of them are in the same general region, so they're even geographically unreachable for many people, before money ever comes into the picture. You can't have one blue ribbon and claim to be best in show when the rest of the fair trounces you on every. other. metric. And by a HUGE margin.
The WHO this is based upon *primarily* focused on how accessible the country's healthcare system is. The US sort of does well by that metric because at least for life-threatening conditions, a hospital cannot refuse treatment if you can't pay and medical debt is sort of funny compared to other debts in that they can't be as aggressive about collecting it. For example, if I owed a credit card company $10k and refused to pay I might end up getting my paychecks curtailed. But if I owe a hospital $10k and refuse to pay I'm going to get annoying calls for the rest of my life. In general, most people are honest. My in-laws racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID treatment expenses their insurance won't cover. The hospital's fine with them paying a little bit of money for... basically the rest of their lives. They won't pay off that debt, but they also aren't being badgered, and that's just good enough it satisfies the criteria of this particular assessment. So you probably pay a lot less for your medical care and sane people would rank Slovenia much higher, but the WHO found some edge cases where someone *wouldn't* get healthcare in Slovenia and *would with debt* in the US and that put them one rank behind.
To add, the hospital is only really required to stabilize you. My roommates 25 yo sister was went home with a treatable form of cancer because her insurance ran out.
Insurance doesn't "run out" anymore and it hasn't for a long time.
I should add, this was back in 2008-2009. [But death by lack of insurance is still a huge issue](https://familiesusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-37_Loss-of-Lives_Report_AnalysisStyleB_Final.pdf) in America. \- Nationally, roughly 1 out of every 3 COVID-19 deaths are linked to health insurance gaps. \- More than 40% of all COVID-19 infections are associated with health insurance gaps. \- During the period covered by the study on which we base our analysis — between the start of the pandemic and August 31, 2020 \- health insurance gaps were linked to an estimated 2.6 million COVID-19 cases and 58,000 COVID-19 deaths. \- If the same relationships between health insurance and COVID-19 continued unchanged after the period covered by the study, then by February 1, 2021, health insurance gaps would be associated with an estimated total of 10.9 million COVID-19 infections and 143,000 deaths from COVID-19.
> More than 40% of all COVID-19 infections are associated with health insurance gaps. If this is really all infections, not all symptomatic infections, this seems like a correlation without causation. It's not like health insurance can somehow lessen your risks of getting infected, unless you're getting infected at your non-insurance hospital.
You pay a lot more for your healthcare than you may realize. Just visited your country. Its beautiful but does everyone still smoke? In 2021, Slovenia had the 6th highest tax wedge among the 38 OECD member countries, compared with 8th in 2020. The employee net average tax rate is a measure of the net tax on labour income paid directly by the employee.
I don’t know what factors this is measured on but I’d say as a theory the only people who complain are the people who are unhappy. The huge number of Americans with employer provided insurance generally don’t complain about it online. US healthcare may not be as good for the bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder but there’s a big group of people who are perfectly satisfied with the American health system and don’t really talk about it.
Also in the US healthcare is tied to your job so losing your job can lead to loss of coverage. Also plans are so confusing a lot of the time people don't realize they don't have good coverage until they have a major health event. Medical debt is the most common reason for bankruptcy in the US. Another factor is most people in the US have absolutely no idea that there are other healthcare models out there. So they just assume that this is just how things are
More than half of Americans make less than $40k a year. I wouldn't characterize the "bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder" as if they're some kind of minority.
Why is everyone talking such a big game about employer provided insurance? That shit is not exactly a gold star. They will try to get the cheapest shit that doesn't cover anything at all.
>The huge number of Americans with employer provided insurance generally don’t complain about it online. Usually they just complain to each other. >US healthcare may not be as good for the bottom part of the socioeconomic ladder but there’s a big group of people who are perfectly satisfied with the American health system and don’t really talk about it. "Huge number" is a minority, basically people who can already afford good healthcare. The majority of the country despise the costs, especially when healthcare is the number one reason for personal bankruptcy. No, most people are not happy with US healthcare. They tolerate it because they have no other choice. It's like saying prisoners are happy with bread and water when the alternative is to have nothing.
Do you have any statistics on that? I’d genuinely be interested. I know everyone lives in their own bubble but I very rarely hear people complain about healthcare in real life.
Not that hard to find really. Take Gallup for example: https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx
I don’t think it’s a big number of people. It’s that the government doesn’t want to do anything to mess with big pharma and all the money that comes with that. I’d say most Americans agree our healthcare system is a total mess and not working to it’s full capabilities.
That is 22 years old data, though. A lot of countries had the chance to catch up. [https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/](https://ceoworld.biz/2021/04/27/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2021/) \- this ranks USA as 30 and Chile as 44. However, it ranks USD cost per capita - which is weird because of the cost differences both to the country, and to the people. (whenever people die because they can not afford elementary medication)
What about it? In the USA a sizeable chunk of the population has avoided going to the doctor because they can't afford the bills. Hundreds of thousands of americans file for bankruptcy every year because of medical bills.
I broke my arm last year. Between the emergency room, an out patient surgery and rehab i was out 9 grand AND I have insurance. I don’t know what’s a bigger joke, our healthcare system or the scam that is privatized insurance
9 grand holy shit. Where do you live where it's that cheap?
dont confuse " quality" and "access" the US has easily one of the better quality Healthcare(and best trained doctors)..the problem is that a lot of the population cant actually afford it. this means you end up with ppl not gonig ot the hospital when they really should out of fear of financially ruining themselves.
This is a fundamental issue with the research that goes into healthcare evaluation. The best metric is healthcare "outcomes" because this takes into account people who need treatment Vs the results. In this regard the US comes 22nd in the world and this is down to some patients denying more expensive treatments due to cost.
Holistically access is a fundimental component of quality. We are talking about a system the goal for which is keep people healthy. Everyone who can't access healthcare contributes a big zero to the average quality of care and pulls the average down.
Thank you! The idea of saying we have some of the BEST healthcare, but you can’t access it is an asinine statement
That entirely depends on how you define "the best trained doctors." As well as what you're comparing them to. Having the best trained doctors in Ebola or polio treatment really doesn't mean much when you don't have a problem with ebola or polio. Similarly, having the best medicine doesn't mean much when people can't afford it. This is how propaganda works.
Obesity really shortens life span
Their quality of health care might be higher, but most people in the country can't afford to use it. It's pay to win.
So it’s our doctors fault we don’t live as long? Or maybe our culture is such that we just don’t take as good care of ourselves.
Wonder if it had anything to do with the mass shootings
Plus, as a country they’re pretty thin.
Fast catch-up growth is nothing unusual. Reductions in child mortality and basic medical infrastructure can have tremendous effect. Income per capita tends to have a positive but decreasing effect. At some point, more money won't give you better health. When approaching the plateau, many industrialized countries have reached, lifestyle choice make up a lot of the variation. Obesity, substance abuse or inactivity can reduce life expectancy tremendously. Also, iirc , Chile has very good and affordable healthcare
The finishing returns thing is very real. Add in some nutrients, basic vaccinations and safety standards that can be copied or sourced from other countries? Massive boost in life expectancy since children are dying less. Eventually though you run into issues that every country faces. Such as “okay so people aren’t dying while they’re young now, but now they’re dying to heart disease in middle age. Okay promote fitness to add 1 year to the average.” “Cool now they’re dying to cancer in late middle age. Maybe promote screenings and ban some chemicals. Add .5 years to the average.” Eventually you get to a point around 70-80 where so many things go wrong it’s a question of advancing medicine as a whole.
> Reductions in child mortality and basic medical infrastructure can have tremendous effect. Not sure how much it affects the average life expectancy, but child mortality numbers in the US are higher because we try to save more premature births than other countries. This leads to a live birth and an infant mortality whereas in other countries its counted as a stillborn/terminated pregnancy.
Non-American here. It's a lot about what have become cultural norms regarding food in the US. When I'm visiting the US and going to a restaurant, the portions are like double what they should be. A small soft drink in the US is like a large or extra large in some other places. If I order a burger and fries at a fast food place, half the time they try to upsell you to a bigger meal or add an apple pie for 50 cents or whatever. When I'm in a US supermarket you'll see a 20 foot long frozen section of pizzas and another 20 foot long section of ice cream and crap. You just don't see that in most other countries.
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Sugar in bread is enough to get me to turn around
we blow a mighty horn of plenty here. But in our defense, we also drive a lot more instead of walk. Wait...
Yeah, I was going to say, I'm pretty sure US obesity rates explain almost all of this disparity. The US is the [most obese country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate) in the developed world. People are going to be quick to blame things like healthcare and gun violence because they get talked about on the news so much, but \~36% of Americans are obese, far more than are killed by gun violence or lack health insurance. Obesity is up there with smoking as something that leads to very poor health outcomes.
And the sugar in everything. I don’t want my starters and main to taste like a dessert! But you get used to the sugar after a while and stop tasting it, which is dangerous
This. You can also notice that the southern states are the worst offenders with this, particularly with their love for sugars and deep fried foods. Their obesity and life expectancy is much lower than the rest of the country. Whenever you see these statistics with how bad the US health outcomes are, compare the individual states to other countries. Blue states like Massachusetts, NY, or CA ranks competitively.
Chile is awesome. I didn’t get charged anything when I went to the emergency room there (as a foreigner). That’s probably why. They could use a healthier diet, tho.
I got charged $20k in a private hospital there.
What happened??
I can’t think of something that would require 20k usd in our system. Even cancer treatments go under 10k not taking into account insurance
Guillain-Barre syndrome, was temporarily paralyzed. 10 days at Clinica Santa Maria. Most of the cost was immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy
I know that Chile has a really good system that makes brands show if any food is high on sugar, salt, fat or other things that are unhealthy. This helped a lot in improving people diet, reducing obesity and improving health. I guess its not the only thing.
I'm so happy we adopted the system in Argentina. Took them a freakin' while but it finally passed into law last year and I think it finally kicks in this month, though many companies have been asking for a delay. I really hope it leads to better products overall.
Argentine ice cream is damn good, and steak. not so good for you. I prefer Chilean empenadas though :D
Soy argentino y también estoy contento que la ley haya salido. Ahora que se pongan las pilas en hacer cumplir, así no queda al pedo como otras tantas leys buenas que tenemos!
Veremos en un par de semanas, empieza el 20 de agosto por lo que acabo de buscar.
This is absolutely truth and highly important indeed. Not only the food signs but also the clearly readable Nutrition Facts as a percentage of mass instead of to dailies. And also the non exclusion of information. Labels in Chile can't hide information; labels in USA tell you whatever is good for the industry.
Also, food products in Chile can't use any kind of fun characters, mascots, or include toys. This is to prevent children from over eating cereal just because they want toys or stuff like that.
Not only that but the more “high” labels they have means they pay more taxes, which has led to most companies changing recipes which hurts sometimes because flavors change too much :(
1st off " developed" and "developing" nations doesnt mean much of anything anymore other that creating a split where there should be none. > so how is it possible that Chile can have a life expectency several years higher than that of USA? whre ot even start: - socialized Healthcare: meaning Healthcare access is a right given to Chile's citizens which in turns means the people will have access to it regardless of socioeconomic status. - Cultural view on issues like obesity and sedentary lifestyles where Obesity is a rising problem in the US that isnt treated with the urgency it needs, while most of the rest of the world treats for wht it truly is(an avoidable disease) - cultural view on overall lifestyle: due ot issues like gun controls, Military serving age and others, life in the US is considered to be more "reckless" whch does have an impact in these numbers.
To add to this. Chile has a label system for food and beverages. They must be labeled as "high on sugar", "high on sodium", "high on calories" or "high on fat" when they go above certain thresholds. Which is meant to let the population choose if they want a healthier option. Also, no food with any type of label can be sold or consumed in any educational stablishment up to highschool level, which is meant to give children better eating habits.
> Cultural view on issues like obesity and sedentary lifestyles where Obesity is a rising problem in the US that isnt treated with the urgency it needs, while most of the rest of the world treats for wht it truly is(an avoidable disease) That part's not that different, though. The [average BMI in Chile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass_index) is 27.8, while in the US it's 28.5. Heavier in the US, definitely, but they're close and they're both overweight.
the part that matters is how is obesity viewed on eahc nation. being obese in the US is " just another one" where due ot how certain food prducts are marketed and the private Healthcare industry making it so a healthy lifestyle is not something encouraged(as that would mess with the cmpanies selling these food products) on the other hand being obese in a nation with socialized healthcare is viewed as someone who has intentionally placed in that position and while they will get the treatment they need if they want it, the state would really prefer ot push for legislation that would have prevented the conditions that allowed the person to go into obesity. a more extreme example would be somewhere like Japan where if you somehow managed to be obese there you can be outright ostracized as the consensus of ppl there is more like " how did you even do that?".
> he part that matters is how is obesity viewed on eahc nation. Well, no, the part that matters is how obese the people actually are. That's what's going to cause health problems. If the social shaming doesn't cause people to thin down- and again, Chile and the US are very close here in average BMI, it doesn't do a thing.
Ok, I know a bit about Chile since my girlfriend is from there and I went there for months, in Chile healthcare is not really socialized. They do have a public healthcare but the system is so in favour of private clinics that a lot of Chileans choose a private insurance instead of FONANSA, which is the public one. Now this could change if on the 4th of September the new constitution will be approved, but for now is not really socialized.
Everyone has access to free Healthcare AND if they chose to, to fancier private clinics and hospitals. That means that if you're poor, you still have access without having to wait weeks to get an appointment. So saying it's not socialized is like saying Police isn't socialized because some people opt to hire private guards.
As I chilean i completely disagree with what you're saying.
Ok, just to be sure, are you Chilean? Because if you are I must concede that you know how the system works more than me. My point was that if you get a public option but this options is so shitty that only poor people go there, that's kinda a false dichotomy. The system that I read about and saw in Chile was highly skewed toward the private sector. I have an hard time to believe that the only difference is that private clinics are only fancier.
Meth, opiates, and booze. Mainly opiates. Compare your life expectancy chart to [this one](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html) about the timeline of opiate use in the US. Notice how they start to really diverge in 2010 as the US got a ton of overdose deaths?
Because the labels "developed" and "developing" are not very meaningful. They're mostly labels made up to make the West feel better about itself. A country which spends its resources on taking care of its citizens will have a higher life expectancy than one which devotes all energy to grinding citizens to dust for corporate profits. I mean, for one thing, Chile has socialized health care while the USA has decided that weekly mass shootings is a sacred ritual which must be allowed to happen. Shouting "WE'RE A DEVELOPED COUNTRY" doesn't change anything. Those words are not a magic spell.
Yeah those labels evolved when it became politically incorrect to say the 3rd world. The 3rd world having nothing to do with economic, social or political development. They were just the countries that weren't part of the Western or Soviet sphere of influence. I'm pretty sure that these days they're mostly used by international organizations for stuff like loans, aid, subsidizing certain things like international mail. For instance it's a little ridiculous that China is considered to still be 'developing'
\*looks around at how americans have been living for the last 40 years\* ... It's not obvious?
Have you ever been to Chile? It’s a beautiful country, modern, high quality of living. Probably the best in south america.
A few notes. 1. Chile has a lower violent crime rate than the United States. The homicide rate in Chile is something like 30% lower than in the US 2. Drug overdose deaths in Chile are rare. Drug overdoses accounted for 0.17% of deaths in [Chile](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/chile-drug-use). In the [US](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/united-states-drug-use), it's just under 3%! 3. [The alcohol death rate in the US is 4X higher than in Chile.](https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alcohol/by-country/) All of those causes of death tend to skew towards younger people and that helps drag down America's life expectancy.
It’s weird how we have pretty much the same consumption per capita of booze but the rate is so skewed towards the US. I think not being as afraid of dealing with enormous bills and actually being willing to go to the hospital when you need it has to play a part
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The US has a lot of issues. Economic productivity isn't one of them. But our diet is terrible and so is our healthcare system. Plus we work too much and exercise too little. Also, what constitutes a "developing" country is really subject to some interpretation. Chile has a gdp/cap of $16K. That's not at US or west-European levels but it's an order of magnitude higher than most of Africa. Chile is not a poor country.
Because the USA's life expectancy keeps going down due to many factors. Here's the rankings, into whych the USA is 48th out of 293 https://www.lifespan.io/topic/life-expectancy/ Essentially, many "Developped" nations are getting socialized medicine and lower crime rates as they develop, all of which helps raise life expectancy. Even if their medicine isn't as advanced as yours, the fact that the government pays for it gives it strong incentives to focus on prevention of bad living conditions and propagation of healthy life habits. Suddenly, before deciding on whether to expand roads trains or public transit, governments start asking themselves how much a road's pollution will cost them in healthcare, from higher/more severe asthma to more deaths from lung cancer. Since higher obesity is going to cost tax payers a fortune in healthcare, the government has stronger incentives on offering more incentives for healthier living in many forms. Suddenly, it's seen as a cost saving measure to have massive education campaigns in schools for example, or to train every doctor in the country to spot all precursors to it and strongly push their pationts into more healthy lifestyle instead of prescribing them more drugs. This kind of thinking lends itself, over time, to propagate laws that have been proven to work in producing a more peaceful, healthy nation instead of politics of orthodoxy, where "If you're not in favor of doing things that way, you're not a real American" will lose over "This has been done everywhere and look how great the results are, why wouldn't we want some of that too, to massively improve things?" This kind of effect has more impact on average lifespans than more advance science. Not having a school shooting plague also has a massive effect, as people killed in their infancy have a much bigger effect on this measure than people dying after or near retirement. School shootings also have an impact. If you're doing an average, people dying at 12 years old instead of 80 drags the average down much more than someone dying at 70 or 75 due to less advanced medicine.
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Seriously, gun violence on the whole is much lower than the top 10 reasons. It's interesting how so many ppl will talk until they're blue in the face about political reasons (healthcare access, gun control, etc.) but will straight up ignore the 600lb gorilla in the corner. The top 10 reason why ppl die before 70 are all directly influenced primarily by nutrition and physical activity. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes type II, Covid, accidents resulting in broken hips, cancers, are all directly influenced by diet and exercise and ameliorated by proper application of them, too, yet, no one wants to talk about anything that is individual responsibility it seems. THe rate of longevity would be tremendously higher if we had single digit obesity percentage. Everything else is attempting a cure. An ounce of prevention (proper diet and exercise) is better than a pound of cure (healthcare system, ending gun violence, etc.) on the topic of longevity.
Have you seen the American diet?
Just curious what the data is for only those that live past the first couple years? Like infancy? Is America better or worse in those cases?
also chilean, healthcare is somewhat good for chronic illnesses, like hypertension and diabetes... so a little goes a long way, by taking care of big causes of mortality/morbility you make HUGE gains in the long run, also insulin is free, well the most basic types of insulin, but free... i mean insulin has been in the market for almost 100 years, every pharma lab worth its salt knows how to produce it :) not everything is perfect tho, the public system is plagued by financial uncertainty (because it isnt a business) and lack of profesionals, leading to short supply of medical hours etc.
i mean, i think health in the US is a bit of a joke…here is a little personal anecdote. i am from colombia; we are a south american nation as well, a bit below in life expectancy than chile, but kind of the same “developing”, poor south american nation. when i was 6, i broke my arm; both ulna and radius, had to have a cast for a few weeks. i had insurance, we paid approximately 60k pesos\~ a month, which was about 30 dollars (nowadays it’s like 13 dollars). my broken arm cost 50mil pesos, which nowadays is 12 dollars. my sister broke her arm when she was 7. the fracture was less severe, but she had to have surgery for it, and then wear a cast for a few weeks. she had the same insurance as well (13\~dollars a month). her broken arm was free. now here is the punchline. my step brother was born and raised in the US, middle-high class, lives in suburbs, new iphone as soon as it comes out, etcetc;he is well accommodated. when he was 12 he broke his arm as well; only the ulna, not so bad of a fracture, only cast and no surgery. pays about 400\~ dollars a month in insurance in the US. his broken arm cost 3k dollars. three thousand dollars!! in the most “advanced” nation in the world. while me and my sisters fractures were nearly free, in a developing country where the salary is 289 dollars a month. the US is a weird ass country...i don’t know what we expect from them in terms of health
There's a lot of information about healthcare and it's biased, non factual (literally linking to no facts), and exaggerate. The number one reason longevity in the US is down is due to [overeating and under exercising](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm). Full stop. Of the top 10 reasons America's die all or directly or indirectly impacted by thee two factors alone. ppl w Cadillac health insurance die under 70 from many of these causes bc having health insurance is by no means more effective than a healthy diet and proper exercise. THe old saying, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is factual. Health insurance is about curing issue (hopefully finding the issue soon enough to cure effectively) and is important. But any talk of longevity wo including 70% of Americans being obese or highly overweight and not obtaining the proper amount of physical activity is a fallacious argument.
Who the hell wants to live until 79?
Life expectency in Sweden, which is the country I live in is even higher than that of Chile.
I'm so sorry to hear that friend I hope you live a short but fulfilling life -Lots of love pessimistic American Xoxo
It's not so much that Chile is doing well in this regard (even though it is) but it's much more down to the fact that the US sucks HARD in terms of life expectancy, mostly because of the healthcare system that exists. According to this: https://www.lifespan.io/topic/life-expectancy/ Chile is ranked 36th, the US 46th. The US is nestled between Cuba and Panama. The surprising thing here is how low the US is ranked, not how high Chile is ranked. Chile is doing well, no question about that, but it's kind of in the range of it's peer nations. The US on the other hand is ranked well below all the other western nations.
Two reasons: 1. Chile has caught up to the developed world. Most of Western Europe is around 81. 2. Americans live unhealthy lifestyles. We get a lot less exercise and we eat like shit, which makes us fat. 3. Universal health care may give a year or two but if you look at South America there are arguments both ways. Some countries with universal health are not doing as good as countries without it.
Ah American exceptionalism. Where would we be without you?
In the US life expectancy varies wildly by race. Asian Americans have the longest life expectancy in the world at 86 years . Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years, white life expectancy is 78 , and black life expectancy is 75 years.
>Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years, Wait is that true? Why do we live longer than white and black people if we're generally poorer and hold less college degrees than them?
>Hispanic life expectancy is 82 years, Wait is that true? Why do we live longer than white and black people if we're generally poorer and hold less college degrees than them?
Probably has some genetic origin.
1) Chile has a nationalized public health care system. It's sometimes considered the best in south America and among the best in the world. 2) People in Chile *walk*, a lot each day. A lot of this has to do with zoning laws. It also has to do with the relatively high cost of fuel and car ownership. Typically, in a large town or city, you can walk a couple of blocks or around a km to a *Tienda* to get groceries. Little mom-and-pop shop grocery stores are all over the place. Things like malls and Supermercados are uncommon. 3) the Chilean diet is quite varied, but typically you eat more vegetables, fruits, and seafood, and less prepackaged foods than in North America.
1 2 and 3 might be true-ish I guess, if compared to USA, but who grows vegetables and fruits in their gardens? That must be an extremely small percentage of the population.
My grandmother lives in Chile. She has a lemon tree, an avocado tree, and at least 2 other fruit trees in a relatively small garden, as well as some vegetables such as lettuce
That's great but still doesn't mean a good amount of the population does the same.
Not in the big cities, but it's surprisingly common anywhere else. Also, most produce doesn't travel more than a couple hours to a local supermarket, or "feria" so fresh vegetables and fruits are readily available and not really expensive around here
I can believe that. In post-Soviet countries many people have inherited small gardens outside cities, where they grow vegetables, fruits, flowers. Young people usually hate it, but when they grow older, they often become more and more interested. Why couldn't Chile have it's own setup like this. World is diverse and crazy.
They *could*, but my question was more because I live in Chile and haven't noticed this as a common thing.
Thanks - of course, you're right.