"The picture emerging is one of a society wracked by burgeoning social inequality, a catastrophic health crisis, and a government health policy aimed at deliberately lowering life expectancy while catering to corporate profit."
Falling
US life expectancy: The product of a deliberate ruling class policy
9
February 2018
An editorial in a British medical journal has focused renewed
attention on the shocking reality that life expectancy in the United States is
declining. “Failing health of the United States: The role of challenging life
conditions and the policies behind them,” published Wednesday in BMJ, formerly
the British Medical
Journal, builds on reports in December by the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that revealed US life expectancy declined
in 2016 for the second year in a row.
The editorial’s authors, Steven H. Woolf and Laudan Aron, both sat
on a joint panel of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine in
2013 that investigated US health disadvantage compared to other member
countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
According to World Bank Data, the average life expectancy of an aggregate of 35
OECD countries stood at about 75.5 years in 1995. By 2015 the rate had risen to
80.3 years, while the US lagged behind at 78.7 years.
The editorial points to the myriad diseases and behaviors
contributing to decreased lifespans in America, as well as to the social and
economic factors driving them. The picture emerging is one of a society wracked
by burgeoning social inequality, a catastrophic health crisis, and a government
health policy aimed at deliberately lowering life expectancy while catering to
corporate profit.
The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes
of death in the US. The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from
2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses,
exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in the Vietnam War. The suicide
rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and 2014.
These “deaths of despair” have disproportionately affected white
Americans, including adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and
women. The sharpest increases have been in rural areas.
As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white,
middle-aged adults and some rural communities, the editorial points to possible
factors, which all relate to class issues. They include “the collapse of
industries and the local economies they supported, the erosion of social
cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress among
white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed.”
The 2013 panel found that “Americans had poorer health in many
domains, including birth outcomes, injuries, homicides, adolescent pregnancy,
HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.” It found that Americans are
more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as intake of high-calorie
foods, drug abuse and firearm ownership.
The editorial also notes that such behaviors are linked to “weaker
social welfare supports and lack of universal health insurance.” What does this
mean in the lives of workers and their families? It means cuts to food stamps
and cash welfare assistance, the shutdown of community clinics and scarcity of
substance abuse programs, lack of health insurance and/or burdensome medical
bills. All these factors contribute to poor health outcomes and premature
deaths.
Falling life expectancy—one of the most important measures of the
social health of a society—has elicited no response from any faction of the US
political establishment, neither the Trump administration nor the Democratic Party.
On Thursday evening, the US Senate was deliberating on a two-year budget
agreement that would increase military spending by $305 billion.... BLOG: WITH NO FUNDING FOR A WALL AGAINST NARCOMEX!
At his weekly press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that
the main factor contributing to the government’s increasing deficit is not the
Pentagon’s gargantuan budget, which funds the US military’s aggression around
the globe, but the so-called entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid—programs that workers depend on for their retirement and their families’
health.
As the Democratic Party continues its obsession with claims of
Russian meddling in the 2018 US elections, the Trump administration has pursued
its assault on social programs. After failing in numerous attempts to repeal
and/or replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the White House repealed the
ACA’s individual mandate as part of the corporate tax overhaul, and has allowed
states to begin imposing work requirements for Medicaid, the health insurance
program for the poor and the disabled.
Discussion of health care and the well-being of American workers
has become a non-issue for the Democrats, as they have emerged as the most
adamant representatives of the military-intelligence agencies, supporting an
impending war against Russia—in opposition to Trump and the Republicans and
their saber-rattling against North Korea.
In reality, the war against the health of American workers has
been a bipartisan conspiracy conducted over decades as part of a conscious
strategy to pare back the gains won through the social struggles of the working
class begun over a century ago.
Under the Obama administration, the implementation of the ACA was
a key volley in the ruling elite’s social counterrevolution in health care.
Sold as an expansion of health care, it was in fact aimed at limiting and
rationing workers’ access to vital medical treatments and medicines as
“unnecessary” and “lavish.” At the same time, through the universal mandate, it
required individuals and families to purchase coverage from private health
insurers under threat of tax penalties.
Both the Democrats and Republicans bemoan the high cost of health
care in America. But the reality is that the high cost of health care—Americans
pay on average $10,000 per person, per year—is not the result of actual
spending on health care for workers and their families for vital treatments. It
is because the US leaves the vast majority of pricing for drugs, procedures and
hospital stays in the hands of the private sector. While hospitals and drug
companies charge outrageous prices, millions of people remain uninsured and
untreated.
For the ruling class, the increasing number of deaths of working
men, women and youth is a “cost of doing business.” Indeed, it is seen as a
positive good, as early deaths mean fewer costs associated with caring for the
elderly—and more resources to pump into the stock market.
The US health care crisis is a national emergency. The ruling
classes of the world, moreover, look to the US as a model for their own
ruthless assault on jobs and social programs. To address this crisis requires a
frontal assault on the wealth of the corporate and financial elite.
The vast resources currently monopolized by the top one
percent must be made available to finance a universal health care system, in
which everyone has access to high-quality care as a basic social right.
Such a social and economic reorganization requires the building of
a mass movement of the working class, in opposition to both Democrats and
Republicans, uniting workers of all races and nationalities in a fight against
the capitalist profit system.
Kate Randall
OPIOID ADDICTION
IN AMERICA:
OBAMA AND HIS
CRONIES IN BIG PHARMA AT WORK!
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
PRINCETON REPORT:
American middle-class is addicted, poor, jobless and suicidal…. Thank the corrupt government for surrendering our borders to 40 million looting Mexicans and then handing the bills to middle America?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/princeton-scholars-opioid-crisis.html
US: Food insecurity may be twice as common as previously estimated
By Mark Ferretti
US: Food insecurity may be twice as common as previously estimated
By Mark Ferretti
10 February 2018
Lack of sufficient access to nutritious food is a much greater problem for the American working class than previously understood, according to research published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition. In a survey of 663 households in Columbus, Ohio, researchers found that 32 percent were food insecure. This rate of food insecurity is double that of previous estimates based on county-level census data.
The researchers considered about half of food-insecure households to be “very low food secure.” People in this group are “skipping meals, at risk for experiencing hunger, and probably missing work and school and suffering health problems as a result,” according to Michelle Kaiser, PhD, an assistant professor of social work at Ohio State, and lead author of the study. Although the current research only examined Columbus, other metropolitan areas likely have similar disparities, she added.
“This study exposed the vastly different experiences of people who all live in the same city,” said Dr. Kaiser. “My suspicion is that most people don’t recognize that there are such discrepancies and can’t imagine living where they couldn’t easily go to a grocery store.” Notwithstanding the obliviousness of the more comfortable layers of the population, these data provide further evidence that the country’s deepening social divisions are reaching critical proportions.
For their study, Dr. Kaiser and colleagues surveyed economically and racially diverse households to understand consumer decision-making and food access. They also audited 90 food stores for the availability of items on the US Department of Agriculture’s Thrifty Food Plan and MyPlate list. The Thrifty Food Plan lists low-cost foods intended to ensure adequate nutrition. This plan is the basis for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which also is known as food stamps. MyPlate offers nutritional advice, such as emphasizing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy proteins.
Although African-Americans were overrepresented among the food insecure, the totality of the data indicated that the divide between food security and food insecurity was fundamentally one of class, not of race. Annual income tended to be less than $25,000 among food-insecure individuals and more than $50,000 among the food-secure. Full-time employment was significantly less common in food-insecure households (54.7 percent) than in food-secure households (75.2 percent). More than 20 percent of food-insecure households depended on Supplemental Security Income (SSI), veterans’ benefits, or other disability benefits, compared with 8.5 percent of food-secure households. About 5 percent of food-insecure households received unemployment benefits, compared with 3 percent of food-secure households. The food insecure were approximately five times more likely to participate in SNAP and nearly four times more likely to participate in the Women, Infants and Children assistance program than the food secure.
As a part of its turbocharged assault on the working class, the Trump administration proposes to cut $193 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years. This proposal goes even further than the $8.7 billion cut to SNAP that President Obama signed into law in 2014. If Trump’s proposal is enacted, it would deprive millions of poor and working-class Americans of assistance, forcing many to skip meals.
In Dr. Kaiser’s study, differences in education coincided with these differences in income. The highest level of education in food-insecure households was more likely to be a high school diploma, GED, two-year degree, or technical degree. But a higher percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree were food secure.
Previous investigations have linked food insecurity with higher risks of depression, anxiety, and social isolation. Dr. Kaiser and colleagues found that obesity, high blood pressure, and prediabetes were significantly more common among the food insecure than the food secure.
The investigators’ audits indicated that supermarkets were more likely than specialty markets, partial markets or convenience stores to offer all of the Thrifty Food Plan items and all of the MyPlate recommendations. Yet, compared with food-secure participants, food-insecure respondents were significantly more likely to shop at partial markets and convenience or corner stores, which had poorer selections. One reason is that the food insecure lived closer to partial markets and convenience stores, while the food secure lived closer to supermarkets and specialty stores.
More than 27 percent of food-insecure households had difficulties finding fresh produce, and 26 percent were “not at all satisfied” with neighborhood food access. “The types of food stores most accessible to food-insecure households rarely stock healthy food items,” said Dr. Kaiser. “In contrast, food-secure households are less likely to have to confront the same environmental challenges as food-insecure households to purchase and consume healthy foods.”
Barriers to obtaining food (e.g., access, safety or crime, and affordability) were more common for food-insecure households than for the food secure. Food-insecure participants also had difficulties with transportation. They were less likely to use their own cars and more likely to get rides from acquaintances, ride public transportation, or walk to get food, compared with the food secure.
More and more grocery stores and supermarkets in low-income areas are closing, according to Dr. Kaiser. Companies rarely establish a new grocery store in an urban area, particularly if it would be near a neighborhood with a high rate of poverty. These decisions are based purely on the profit motive. As they chase middle-class and wealthy shoppers, the big supermarket chains shutter stores in poor and working-class areas. Consequently, as Dr. Kaiser’s study indicates, poor and working-class people are left with fewer options, which leaves them in worse health than their wealthier peers.
Like companies in any other industry, supermarkets extract their profits from the labor of their employees. As shareholders demand greater returns, the supermarket chains abandon less profitable locations and wrest concessions from their workers. The result is a worsening of inequality and continuing assaults on the health and well-being of the working class.
No comments:
Post a Comment