Wealthy Americans have death rates on par with poor Europeans

I am a dual national with roots in Europe. A far greater contributor is the lack of avoidable chronic disease in Europe. I know many middle class and above Americans who have ongoing battles with their insurance companies to treat and manage relatively mundane issues. If they apply enough time and money they can usually resolve things though often this requires pausing treatment or changing doctors recommendations.

This does not exist in Europe. What your doctors recommend happens regardless of your income.

There is an image I see when in the US. A homeless person who is crippled and pushing themselves with a stick or one leg in a wheelchair. Lame thanks to lack of treatment. You never see that in Europe. Homeless people exist but they aren’t chronically ill.

This has positive effects for everyone. There is less disease in the environment and it’s easier for people to literally get back on their feet.

It’s a bit of wishful thinking to presume Americans poor health is all lifestyle choices and advertising. It’s the system and a pervasive lack of easy to access treatment at all levels of society.

It's, in part, the American diet. Americans eat an insane amount of beef, fat, grease, etc which accumulates into old age. Then older Americans see a reduction in "usable years" because basic things become difficult.

A lot of older Americans are "skinny fat". In that they might not appear obese, but their actual health compares to an obese sedentary person.

Add in the car centric culture, the obsession with luxury goods(beef is a luxury food), and the glorification of sedentary lifestyles, and you get olds who can barely walk for the last 20 years of their life.

We're also seeing a crazy uptick in people in their 20s coming down with heart diseases. I havent looked into that specific issue in a while but the leading theories were over consumption of caffeine and beef.

I grew up in rural America. I watched so many older people I knew come down with diabetes and heart issues in their 40s and early 50s. It meant they couldn't do much physically. A lot of older Americans, especially rural, spend their last 20 years trapped in their home because going outside is too much effort. In hindsight, and the data backs this up, it's clearly their diet. Americans glorify overconsumption of horrible foods. We made beef and meat a luxury good and encouraged it's over consumption by making it a "thing" successful people consumed every night.

This is also varied heavily in the US? My wife and I joke all the time that the 70yos are out jogging every day where we live, now. There is a set of cyclists that are all in their 60s we see several times a week outside of our house.

> Europeans do drink a lot, but it's in moderation, if that makes sense. Less binge drinking all at once, more drinks during meals and spread throughout the week. We all know the liver processes alcohol at a specific rate so this is less damaging to health.

I'm sceptical that this is a big factor. Ireland and the UK have a big binge drinking problem, but Ireland's in the top end of European countries for life expectancy; the UK's a bit lower down the list, but still just about at the EU average.

Though, you also have to be careful with small differences, because the data is often imperfect. One darkly funny thing to come out of the covid pandemic was that there were significantly more very elderly people in Ireland than it was generally believed; this showed when the covid vaccination rate for the over-85 age cohort went over 100% (I think it hit 109% by the end). It turned out that the central statistics office's population estimates had simply been wrong; they had been running off an assumed death rate since the last census which turned out to be overly pessimistic.

what EU country has the best food? (i’m from canada but every time i’ve been in the EU i’ve noticed the EU food is much better)

American prepared food has on average, almost twice as much sugar as in Europe, largely due to differences in regulation.

Americans walk less than in Europe, making less than half as many foot trips as Europeans, largely due to differences in infrastructure.

Americans visit the doctor less often than in Europe, largely due to the lack of universal healthcare all other high-income countries have.

I think obesity might be the symptom, not the actual culprit.

obesity is a symptom, not a cause.

to me, the rabid response to anything remotely resembling socialism, and the inability to see life as anything but a zero-sum game is the obvious culprit. this precludes caring for eachother, and creates a life that's essentially a never-ending rat race for everyone, rich and poor alike.

you cant inject your way out of a society that is, at its core, defined by class/racial segregation, systemic inequality and distrust of governments.

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What you describe is more accurately called the "prosperity Gospel", not evangelical Christianity. Mainstream evangelical Christianity doesn't believe anything like what you describe.

But it's the job, the obligation, of a democratic government to create a safety net so people who enter poverty can bounce out of it. No religious nut should be in charge of that, although I can see how that is very convenient to play politics.

I suspect you think that healthcare is helpful, and that if we could only buy poor people more healthcare then their lives would be improved. Healthcare regularly doesn't help that much. Even the richest often die young because healthcare regularly cannot FIX things (think chemotherapy then die).

There's some mental fallacy we buy into that health can be fixed - when the only healthy choice is preventative mitigation. The answer is to live a healthy life: especially regular exercise. But also sensible food choices and removing stress (remove stressors or maybe learn techniques to ignore stress), and avoiding drugs/alcohol/smoking.

Rich Americans are unhealthy too and for the majority how much they spend on medical interventions usually doesn't fix their quality-of-life or length-of-life.

The poor mostly have as much access to a healthy life as the wealthy: so why are both the poor and the rich unhealthy?

The hard question to answer is why we live unhealthy lifestyles ;; is it capitalist advertising ;; should we blame cultural mores ;; are we victims of our own poor choices...

Anecdotes (New Zealand specific):

1: a poorer friend with hip problems that needed replacements in 40s but was forced to live in excruciating conditions for years due to how New Zealand's socialised health budgetary constraints are implemented (via waiting lists). No money was saved by the government because the surgery was eventually paid for (background: surgery cost for both hips was approx equal one pretax year of minimum wages in NZ).

2: two friends with a poor backgrounds that got middle aged diabetes - my guess is caused by booze & maybe smoking. Both THEN started exercise and also changed their habits and lifestyle. One is well off and money didn't really help them. Both could have previously lived healthier lifestyles but only changed their habits after being faced with severe frightening outcomes. Drugs like metformin help (that drug is cheap, however ongoing regular monitoring by doctor is not cheap). Expensive surgical interventions caused by diabetes will never fix the problems caused by poor living.

How much we should blame people's "choices" for poor health outcomes is difficult to answer. If someone chooses to drink booze, how much should society pay for their choice? We have high sin taxes in New Zealand so people have often paid for their medical help however the taxes do not cover the overall societal cost. A better example is acquaintances that have destroyed their health through recreational drug usage (which definitely isn't sanctioned by larger society, and definitely is sanctioned by peer society). I'm a huge believer in personal choice - but I'm no fan of having to pay for the bad choices made by others.

That's the issue with New Zealand's socialism. I can carefully live a prudent life : however it galls to be taxed to pay for people that ignore the cost of their choices.

Aside: it really neeps my bibbles that doctors are seen as saving lives. Engineering, economics and science save most lives. Doctors don't help much. (Ofc "saving" lives is a nonsense term anyway)

Well, Switzerland cowardly decided not to react or retaliate, even though those tariffs make no sense. I don't know why we expect a reasonable response here, if you ask me this is a huge red flag and warning that the US is not a trustworthy trade partner.

At least 50% of generics come from India, and they import 80% of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from China.

If China or India stop pharmaceutical shipments to the USA, there would be extreme shortages, and the die off would be biblical in proportions.

Pharmaceuticals are exempted at the moment.

I’ve observed in Australia, the closer you are to the CBD (the main city postcode), the healthier the people are, once you get to the outer suburbs is like an entirely different country. The streets look different, the people are all obese, the cars are bigger, etc.

I honestly think that we don’t put enough emphasis on how bad cars are for your health.

Denver is walkable? I'd have called it "sprawling".

I read something recently that said the rise of American suburbia can be traced to increased rates of crime in the cities due to immigrant populations (this was over the last 50 years or so).

Now that Europe has seen such a huge increase in immigrant populations (and the corresponding crime increases), perhaps suburban-type environments will become more desirable there in the near future.

> 2) People eat better

Except here in Germany, at least the restaurants (but the art of cooking has declined too, favoring frozen pizza and similar foods). Especially since COVID. Our restaurant food is not good, and will still get five stars in the restaurant reviews all the time.

After COVID it got even worse. In my major city I saw food in well-known central restaurants become really bad, despite significant increases in price, and I mean "bad" and not just "it is not as tasty as I would like".

What is thriving are Döner (kebab shops) - often using questionable "meat", dirt-cheap Asian places (nowadays often with "Sushi", at very low prices), and burger shops. Italian restaurants focus on pizza and pasta - the cheapest-to-prepare easy-carbs-focused options.

I miss the Bay Area and its food options (I used to live there for quite a few years).

I think it would be more accurate to say you can (and people choose to).

Older people in europe also tend to smoke which probably keeps weight down.