Tag Archive for: mortality data

Choosing to Live Longer

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The researchers from the study I reviewed in Tuesday’s Memo had their thoughts on why the U.S. may experience excess deaths compared to other high-income countries. They also suggested that our healthcare system isn’t serving the American people as well as it might. That may be part of the answer. Let me give you my thoughts, before the anti-seed oil gurus and vaccination opponents get started.

Healthcare Systems

Every other country in the comparison had some form of universal healthcare or a combination of public and private healthcare plans—think Medicare with more coverage for an additional purchase. While we’ve all heard stories about hip replacements taking a year to get scheduled, they provide care to everyone without considering payment first. I’m not suggesting I have any answers to the healthcare dilemma, but it’s a part of the problem.

Vaccinations

I decided to look at the vaccination rates during the COVID epidemic because the U.S. mortality rate really skyrocketed during those couple of years, far above what happened in other high-income countries. When compared to other countries’ vaccination rates, we were near the bottom of the list. I know, and hear every day, about many people who are concerned about vaccinations being problematic, but the COVID vaccine may have contributed to the lower mortality rates in other countries.

The Bottom Line

Remember the final reasons that the researchers speculated about—cardiometabolic disease? Heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes are the top killers in the U.S. along with cancer. We could dramatically reduce mortality and morbidity if we took better care of our bodies. That’s where we fail: we eat too much and we move too little. If we could change those, I’m convinced the death rates would start to tumble.

Eat less. Eat better. Move more. Today.

So, what are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: JAMA Health Forum. 2025;6(5):doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.1118

Too Many Deaths

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Recently I read an interesting study that examined the mortality rates in the United States between 1980 through 2023, including the time before, during, and after the COVID epidemic. Researchers took it one step further: they obtained mortality data from other high-income countries to compare the mortality rates between the countries while accounting for the differences in population size. The countries included Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

This comparison illustrated that beginning about 1985, the U.S. had more deaths per 100 people than the average of all the other countries. In 2005, the difference increased even more to the point that the U.S. had more deaths per 100 people than every other country in the study. Over the course of the years of observation, that came to an extra 14.5 million Americans who died.

While this was an observational study, it leaves us with the question: why? We certainly spend more on healthcare per capita than any other high-income country, coming in at just over $12,000 per person, while the average of other high-income countries comes in at half that—and yet somehow they’re healthier. The researchers cited drug overdose, shooting deaths, and cardiometabolic disease as the most likely contributing factors. I’ll give you my thoughts on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: JAMA Health Forum. 2025;6(5):doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.1118