According to The Guardian, rich Americans live up to 15 years longer than poor ones. From the article:
The Lancet studies looked at how the American health system affects
inequality and structural racism, and how mass incarceration and the
Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, have changed public
health.
Among the studies’ key findings: the richest 1% live up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%;
the same gap in life expectancy widened in recent decades, making
poverty a powerful indicator for death; more than one-third of
low-income Americans avoid medical care because of costs (compared to 7%
in Canada and 1% in the UK); the poorest fifth of Americans pay twice
as much for healthcare as a share of income (6% for the poor, versus
3.2% for the rich); and life expectancy would have grown 51.1% more from
1983 to 2005 had mass incarceration not accelerated in the mid-1980s.
The poorest Americans have suffered in particular, with life
expectancies falling in some groups even while medicine has advanced.
For example, researchers reported that the poorest fifth of women born
between 1930 and 1960 statistically lived four years less than Americans
in the top fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum.
All of these health outcomes arrive in the context of widening
general inequality. The share of total income going to the top 1% of
earners has more than doubled since 1970, making the US more unequal than all but three developed countries: Chile, Mexico and Turkey.
At the same time, the American healthcare system is the most expensive in the world. Efficiency and fairness: in no way is the system either.
This is very sad. Often, because people in low-income families avoid seeking medical attention, serious illnesses are only detected in their late stages, when they are harder to treat. The cost of healthcare makes taking preventative measures, and having checks less accessible to low-income families. I think this may be one of the reasons for the difference in life expectancies.
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