Why Does the United States Rank 37th in the World for Life Expectancy?

[This Editorial on U.S. Health Care began Wednesday.]

Philip Miller, founder and Medical Director of Los Gatos Longevity Institute explained that life expectancy for the OECD ranking is calculated using a complex mathematical formula that balances death with infant mortality.

To quote: “A country with a high infant mortality has a lower life expectancy rate – at birth ... If the figures are adjusted for life expectancy after the age of 60 [the U.S. ranks] number 5 in the world. If life expectancy figures are adjusted after the age of 80 we rate number 3 in the world.”

Miller concluded. “We are not number 37 in the world. We are in the top three. Life expectancy figures beg a revised definition.”

It’s too bad our elected representatives haven’t had the common sense to address the individual areas where U.S. health care is lacking (like relatively high infant mortality) rather than passing more than 2700 pages of legislation so riddled with pork that I’m surprised no one has contracted trichinosis reading it.

Why do I think this is relevant to a site about anti-aging? Because adults in the U.S. are living longer than ever and we need to take care of ourselves, especially if the healthcare system is forced to cut services and ration care due to the cost of a bureaucratic socialized healthcare system.

With federal funding for abortion in the House bill, it seems that the U.S. is heading (both literally and figuratively) toward “throwing the baby out with the bath water”.

Tags: life expectancy, interpreting statistics, life expectancy at birth, increasing U.S. life expectancy, fixing healthcare, throw the baby out with the bath water, high infant mortality, skewed healthcare statistic