The United States is in the grip of two deadly despair-fueled health crises: Suicides and drug overdoses are both on the increase. The suicide rate in the country is up almost 30 percent since the turn of the century. In 2017, there were 1.4 million suicide attempts in the U.S. More than 47,000 of them resulted in death. Meanwhile, so many people are now dying because of drug overdoses — 70,000 per year — that they have become the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 55.
Life expectancy numbers have historically differed sharply along racial lines, with white people overall expected to live 4.3 years longer than Black people on average, and 2.0 years longer than Indigenous people on average, as of 2009. These disparities continue to persist, but the conditions of life in the U.S. are now also starting to eat away at life expectancies for certain subsets of the white population, as well: in 2012, data showed that for white men without a high school diploma, life expectancy since 1990 had declined by three years; for white women without a high school diploma it declined by a staggering five years.
While wealthy Americans have vast resources at their disposals, tens of millions are living ever more insecure lives, bedeviled by constant economic insecurity, the fear of hunger and homelessness, the burden of crushing payday loans or credit card debt. As any doctor will tell you, constant fear of the future generates chronic stress; and stress can, over the long run, contribute to an array of debilitating, and potentially fatal, diseases.
So, too, lack of access to affordable, safe housing puts people, especially children, at risk of exposure to the sorts of pollutants that trigger asthma and a host of other serious ailments. The Institutes of Health, for example, has documented numerous links between substandard housing, particularly leaking pipes, mold, and the presence of toxic chemicals and metals, and the onset of asthma, chronic headaches, fever, nausea and other ailments.
For the past several decades, administrations of both political parties have largely played a passive role as the country’s public housing stock corroded, have made at best half-hearted efforts to reverse the trends of growing inequality, and haven’t invested nearly enough in drug treatment or mental health programs.
From
https://truthout.org/articles/what-would-a-post-aca-america-look-like/
Life expectancy numbers have historically differed sharply along racial lines, with white people overall expected to live 4.3 years longer than Black people on average, and 2.0 years longer than Indigenous people on average, as of 2009. These disparities continue to persist, but the conditions of life in the U.S. are now also starting to eat away at life expectancies for certain subsets of the white population, as well: in 2012, data showed that for white men without a high school diploma, life expectancy since 1990 had declined by three years; for white women without a high school diploma it declined by a staggering five years.
While wealthy Americans have vast resources at their disposals, tens of millions are living ever more insecure lives, bedeviled by constant economic insecurity, the fear of hunger and homelessness, the burden of crushing payday loans or credit card debt. As any doctor will tell you, constant fear of the future generates chronic stress; and stress can, over the long run, contribute to an array of debilitating, and potentially fatal, diseases.
So, too, lack of access to affordable, safe housing puts people, especially children, at risk of exposure to the sorts of pollutants that trigger asthma and a host of other serious ailments. The Institutes of Health, for example, has documented numerous links between substandard housing, particularly leaking pipes, mold, and the presence of toxic chemicals and metals, and the onset of asthma, chronic headaches, fever, nausea and other ailments.
For the past several decades, administrations of both political parties have largely played a passive role as the country’s public housing stock corroded, have made at best half-hearted efforts to reverse the trends of growing inequality, and haven’t invested nearly enough in drug treatment or mental health programs.
From
https://truthout.org/articles/what-would-a-post-aca-america-look-like/
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