STAT – U.S. life expectancy declined in 2021, per CDC data
In 2021, residents of Hawaii had the highest life expectancy at birth at 79.9 years, while Mississippi had the lowest at 70.9 years, according to newly released CDC data. As seen on the map above, residents of southern states overall tended to have the lowest life expectancies, while the highest life expectancies were reported among people in western and northeastern states. For the most part, the states with the lowest life expectancies were also the states with the largest difference between the numbers for men and women. Overall, life expectancy declined by a little more than half a year from 2020 to 2021, mostly due to the pandemic, per the agency’s report.
The conclusions are based on “complete period life tables” for each state, which depict how a hypothetical cohort of people would survive if they lived every year of their life in the conditions of a particular period — in this case, the conditions we lived through during 2021. (The tables are “complete” because they include mortality data for every single year of life, rather than data in five- or 10-year intervals.)
Europe offers clues for solving America’s maternal mortality crisis
By Laura Ungar
apnews.com – Midwife Jennie Joseph touched Husna Mixon’s pregnant belly, turned to the 7-year-old boy in the room with them and asked: “Want to help me check the baby?”
With his small hand on hers, Joseph used a fetal monitor to find a heartbeat. “I hear it!” he said. A quick, steady thumping filled the room.
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Traveling To Die: The Latest Form of Medical Tourism
By Debby Waldman
kffhealthnews.org – In the 18 months after Francine Milano was diagnosed with a recurrence of the ovarian cancer she thought she’d beaten 20 years ago, she traveled twice from her home in Pennsylvania to Vermont. She went not to ski, hike, or leaf-peep, but to arrange to die.
“I really wanted to take control over how I left this world,” said the 61-year-old who lives in Lancaster.
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American women have lowest life expectancy among high-income countries
By Alejandra O’Connel-Domenech
thehill.com – Women in the U.S. can expect to live shorter lives than women in similarly wealthy nations, according to a brief from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group focused on health care.
In the brief, published Thursday, the Commonwealth Fund used provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to calculate the life expectancy for U.S. women in 2022 at birth which, at 80, is the lowest female life expectancy among similarly high-income countries in areas such as Europe, Asia and Oceania.
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US Still Last for Life Expectancy Among English-Speaking Countries
By Dennis Thompson
healthday.com -Americans continue to rank dead last in life expectancy among English-speaking countries, a new study finds.
People in the United States more often fall prey at younger ages to accidental deaths, homicides and chronic diseases, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the BMJ Open journal.
On the other hand, Australians had the longest life expectancy of any English speakers, despite their country teeming with deadly sharks, spiders and snakes.
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Insurers can restrict mental health care. What laws protect patients in your state?
By Annie Waldman, Maya Miller
npr.org – Accessing mental health care can be a harrowing ordeal. Even if a patient finds a therapist in their network, their insurance company can overrule that therapist and decide the prescribed treatment isn’t medically necessary.
This kind of interference is driving mental health professionals to flee networks, which makes treatment hard to find and puts patients in harm’s way.
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Feds Killed Plan To Curb Medicare Advantage Overbilling After Industry Opposition
By Fred Schulte
kffhealthnews.org – A decade ago, federal officials drafted a plan to discourage Medicare Advantage health insurers from overcharging the government by billions of dollars — only to abruptly back off amid an “uproar” from the industry, newly released court filings show.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the draft regulation in January 2014. The rule would have required health plans, when examining patient’s medical records, to identify overpayments by CMS and refund them to the government.
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