For every illness, socialism has the answer

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Americans live shorter lives on average than people in other developed nations.

Since 1979, the average life span of an American has increased from 73.9 years to just under 79 years, but the average life span of people in other developed nations – the CDC used those 35 countries making up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – has increased to almost 81 years. And the average life expectancy of Americans dropped in 2016 for the second year in a row; something that hasn’t happened in nearly 60 years.

Thankfully, The Washington Post has the answer to our problems. We just need more socialism and gun control, which will magically get rid of all the booger bears the left believes are the cause of all our ills.

According the fake news Post, expensive healthcare is partially to blame. Conveniently, the Post fails to note the role Obamacare has played in driving up the cost of health insurance and health care – which are two different things.

Universal healthcare would solve those problems, according to the Post. But the Post – again conveniently – leaves out the fact that people in countries with universal healthcare are routinely denied access to health procedures or have them delayed for lack of doctors or hospital space.

It also doesn’t note the fact that America’s healthcare system is actually a drug-care system. Allopathic medicine treats every ailment as if it’s caused by a chemical deficiency by prescribing one (or usually more) chemical drugs to mask symptoms rather than focus on nutritional and environmental causes of our ailments.

Nor does it discuss the fact that a major contributor to our shortened life spans is a class of drugs prescribed like candy by our magnanimous physician class – opioids – or that there are studies that show that Obamacare (which is only marginally short of universal healthcare) is responsible in the exponential growth of opioid addictions and deaths. Drug overdose deaths exceeded 59,000 in 2016 and may have reached 65,000 total, which puts it far higher than the peak of car crashes, HIV-related deaths and deaths from gunshots.

Some research indicates that the number of iatrogenic deaths (deaths induced inadvertently by a physician, surgeon, medical treatment or diagnostic test) total more than 780,000 annually; in-hospital adverse reactions to prescribed drugs may total more 2.2 million per year; more than 20 million antibiotic prescriptions are written each year for viral infections (for which they have no effect); more than 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed each year; and another 8.9 million people are hospitalized unnecessarily each year.

Simply put, America’s healthcare system is in reality a deathcare system driven by profits, not patient care. But going to a universal healthcare system would not solve that because government programs are likewise profit-driven – hence the need to delay or deny coverage, especially among seniors – that occurs in every universal healthcare system. And physicians in universal healthcare systems likewise treat symptoms by masking them with chemicals rather than going to the root of the problem – poor nutrition.

The Post also blames “easy access to guns” as a driver of America’s declining lifespan. But the Post fails to note that by far the most homicides occur in inner cities – by blacks against other blacks — with the strictest of gun laws and that most of those using guns to intentionally kill others are prohibited by one gun law or another from even owning one. It also overlooks the fact that those very cities are run by progressives whose policies have led to the breakdown of the family unit, loss of job opportunities and a culture of despair, which contribute to the high rate of drug use, homicide and other crimes.

Beyond that, the Post blames “the stinginess of our social safety net relative other rich countries” as a contributing factor. For the Post, getting kids in school earlier, spending more on education, having paid and mandated maternity leave and paid and mandated vacation and sick leave, higher unemployment benefits, government-supplied pensions and a more progressive tax code would drive up lifespans by almost four years, citing a study published in ScienceDirect.

But neither the Post nor ScienceDirect discuss from where the money for these programs would come, nor do they note that the OECD countries are able to spend a greater share of the gross domestic product on social welfare programs without going bankrupt because the U.S. is providing the lions’ share of their defense.

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