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Not necessarily a counterpoint but Chile's dual system -private and public, both with copay for most- gives them a life expectancy of 81.79 years, surpassing a lot of more developed countries with free universal healthcare.


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Cuba scores well on a number of health indicators. Another latin american country, Mexico, also has high life expectancy (77yrs).

Life expectancy is pretty low in the US though. Seems all in all the system doesn’t work well.

Here is a comparison of US life expectancy vs a selection of socialist governed nations[0].

US life expectancy may have plateaued, but doesn't appear to be in decline, and it's still above even Cuba, which has perhaps the highest amount of social spending on healthcare as portion of GDP.

Meanwhile, Venezuela and Mexico are in clear declines.

With regards to which extremes of the political spectrum have the highest body counts, I would say the far-left Marxist states are the clear winners, with somewhere in the region of 42 to 160 million killed.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...


Average US life expectancy: 79

Average Cuban life expectancy: 78

High priced and highly available medical care doesn't always buy the outcomes one would expect.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...


Wow, pretty interesting. I compared to the US and it turned out that I'm expected to live 0.2 year longer than if I was from the US. I'm from a third-world (Tunisia if you are curious), so that was totally unexpected. The Life expectancy here is pretty high comparing to other developing countries.

What you are arguing against is a classic smoke and mirrors job where two unrelated things are linked together. If you look outside the US you see similar huge gains in life expectancy. Which are 95% due to basic public health measures.

Seriously:

Life expectancy Cuba: 79.18 years.

Life expectancy US: 79.11


It is interesting to see that european countries, who have national health systems, tend to have an higher life expectancy than the U.S. [0] Maybe the opportunity to live longer and healthier can be considered a sort of socialist anachronism. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

I am from a 3rd world/developing country my maternal grandfather died at the age of 42 from a disease that is easily curable today. He was from a rich family that could afford the best healthcare of the time. Today a poor man can get cured of the same disease so life expectancy has gone up. But it is an avg more people are surviving to an older age

Cuba and the USA have roughly the same life expectancy, with Cuba slightly ahead. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...

UK residents have the 20th highest life expectancy in the world. 21st for health-adjusted life expectancy. The Japanese take the top spot and live +2 years. The average American lives -2 years.

There's a lot more to health than the health care system, and this doesn't say much about how painful the process can be, but the stats look pretty good for the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...


I'm happy for your friend, but this is anecdotal evidence.

Statistics don't agree with your story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...


Cuban life expectancy is almost exactly equal to American life expectancy; likely better over the last two years, actually (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...). They don't seem to be doing that badly at keeping folks alive.

And yet, there is no country in the world that has lower life expectancy now than 200 years ago. http://www.maxroser.com/everyone-is-better-off-life-expectan...

Life expectancy is not really related to health care.

Are you certain of this? I thought life expectancy had more to do with environment and lifestyle than health care.

Basically, I'm wondering: if someone makes good decisions, or the best of their circumstances, how does their average life expectancy stack up to other developed nations?

What are you talking about, it's there clear as day, the US beats Cuba on life expectancy:

https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/


And yet we have a quite higher life expectancy than the US

If you measure outcomes, it has worked quite well. Japan's life expectancy is 84 years. South Korea's is 82. For comparison, the US is 78.5 and decreasing.
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