The COVID-19 pandemic showed just how difficult it is to achieve good healthcare outcomes when the population is sicker to begin with and has insufficient access to preventive and primary care. When combined with limited access to care, people in the US tend to die of these conditions earlier, and they are left more vulnerable to other health threats. The US population is also sicker, on averageĪs gaps in health insurance leave some Americans unable to afford preventive and primary medical care, the population has become sicker as a whole.Ĭompared to other high-income countries, the US population has a higher prevalence of chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and respiratory ailments. According to the Borgen Project, people in Sweden do not pay for medical consultations after they reach a cap of about $125 USD. Peer countries like Switzerland and Sweden have fixed annual out-of-pocket maximums that limit how much individuals pay for healthcare. Some countries offer these services at no cost to the individual, while other nations have created annual caps on how much a person can pay out-of-pocket. Most of the countries with the highest life expectancies offer near-universal coverage for all kinds of medical care, including primary care and hospital care. For context, the US population is estimated to exceed 332 million in 2022. Nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured and about 40 million are not fully covered by their health plans, leaving them at risk of prohibitive costs. Differences in healthcare may explain why Americans tend to die earlier.Īmericans pay more for healthcare compared to other high-income populationsĪccording to The Commonwealth Fund, the US is the only high-income country that does not have some form of universal health insurance. The US average ranks lower than the average life expectancy across peer countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and it's also lower than the average for the entire European Union. Life expectancy in the US has increased by smaller amounts than in peer countries since 1980 - and the COVID-19 pandemic may have widened that gap, based on provisional estimates from Kaiser Family Foundation. Projections for 2021 showed another drop to 76.1 years, which would be the biggest two-year downturn in US life expectancy since 1921-1923, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.Ĭompared to similarly large and wealthy nations, the US has seen its average life expectancy dwindle over the past several decades. In 2020, life expectancy at birth declined to 77 years - the lowest national average since 1996. Life expectancy in the US has dropped to a low not seen in this millennium, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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