report: US life expectancy WAY down ("shocking truth")

[donsu]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1307954,00.html

Lifespan crisis hits supersize America

Bloated, blue-collar Americans - gorged on diets of fries and burgers, but denied their share of US riches - are bringing the nation's steady rise in life expectancy to a grinding halt.

Twenty years ago, the US, the richest nation on the planet, led the world's longevity league. Today, American women rank only 19th, while males can manage only 28th place, alongside men from Brunei.

These startling figures are blamed by researchers on two key factors: obesity, and inequality of health care. A man born in a poor area of Washington can have a life expectancy that is 40 years less than a woman in a prosperous neighbourhood only a few blocks away, for example.

-snip-

Their paper is one of a recent swathe of studies that have uncovered a shocking truth: America, once the home of the world's best-fed, longest-lived people, is now a divided nation made up of a rich elite and a large underclass of poor, ill-fed, often obese, men and women who are dying early.
-snip-
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[Fovea]

1. Ok Kerry/Edwards

Here is the health care grenade to stuff up the PNAC nostril.

I mean it. Note my sig line. We *are* already a third world nation in the ways that count. Walmart materialism is collapsing, folks.

[SoCalDem]

2. Macaroni & cheese, packaged lunchmeat, & fast food will kill

a person if that's all they have access to (can afford)..

This is something that irks my soul..when "some" people attack poor people by saying..they are fat, so they cannot be undernourished..

There is a world of difference between "filling" food...and "good" food..

[camero]

3. Most of the nations above us in life expectancy

have universal health systems. Even Cuba is ahead of us. But our health care system says to us, "Your money or your life".