Access to healthcare does not deliver health

Stanford economist Raj Chetty and coworkers published an important paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week. It’s free. They looked at the association between income and longevity in the US. The results will disrupt a lot of what you might have thought about healthcare. The first finding was not surprising: higher income associated with longer life. The differences were immense–almost 15 years from lowest to highest income for men. The second finding was that inequality in life expectancy increased over time. Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women in the top 5% of income group, but by only 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the bottom 5%. Life expectancy in the low-income group varied a lot based on geography. The poor in some cities did much better than poor in other cities. The fourth finding was the most important for the American concept of healthcare. The researchers found that geographic differences in life expectancy for individuals in the lowest income group were significantly correlated with health behaviors such as smoking, but were not significantly correlated with access to medical care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions. Read that again. Access to healthcare did not correlate with life expectancy. This is exactly what Dr. David Nash (Thomas Jefferson University) told the American College of Cardiology meeting t...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs