Female life expectancy by county, 2007.
View larger interactive map Source: University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
The Boston Globe's
Derrick Z. Jackson highlights a study with staggering implications on a range of issues: Life expectancy in the United States is 37th in the world, and in many cases it is moving backwards. Women in particular lost ground:
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation this month published a county-by-county analysis of life expectancy. From 1987 to 1997, there were 227 counties where female life expectancy dropped. From 1997 to 2007, the number of counties where women’s life expectancy dropped exploded to 737.
Comparisons with the rest of the developed world are more appalling. Of the nation’s 3,147 counties, nearly two-thirds — 2,054 — fell further behind life expectancies for women in the 10 longest-living countries. This is despite the United States having the world’s highest per-capita health spending.
Black men also fare poorly, and the map is telling:
Besides the precarious state of women, life expectancy for black men in two-thirds of the nation’s counties is no better than what it was in other rich countries in the 1950s. The geographical inequality of who lives the longest or least in America is so stark that the maps from the University of Washington study almost perfectly mirror the national maps of obesity and diabetes done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both maps show the Deep South and Appalachia at the epicenter of the nation’s health collapse.
In other words, no matter what they tell you about the US having the greatest health care system in the world, for huge chunks of our population, the system isn't working.