Life expectancy in the United States has sadly dropped once again, and progressives aren’t squandering the opportunity to turn what should be a solemn reminder of the consequences of poor public policy and individual choices into a political win. Leading online liberal, novelist, and content creator John Green was quick to point out that all the countries above us in the life-expectancy index have some form of socialized medicine. This is a profoundly disingenuous and callous way of making a case for universal health care. Others peddled propaganda about how China’s life expectancy is higher than America’s.
For starters, it’s important to dispense with the notion that the Chinese have surpassed us in life expectancy. CCP apparatchiks have given us little reason to believe any of the statistics coming out of Beijing. We should be especially wary given all we know about the initial Covid outbreak in Wuhan. It’s sad to see academics and journalists serving as unwitting pawns of a genocidal regime.
Second, our health-care system is not a monocausal explanation of why American health outcomes are worse. This phenomenon is a product of individual choices and culture. The reality is that Americans eat more, shoot each other more, and drive more recklessly than the people of any other developed country. Injudicious lifestyle decisions, whose consequences have been exacerbated by the pandemic, not the health-care system, are to blame for health disparities between America and her counterparts. This is American exceptionalism, for better or for worse. The term is not always boastful, after all; it is often descriptive.
Third, while conservatives ought to consider adopting some aspects of Swedish or Swiss health care in their policy prescriptions, the notion that single-payer is some panacea for our ailing population is ludicrous. Government intervention in the health-care sector has made health outcomes in this country demonstrably worse.
Between regulatory barriers suppressing innovation, entitlement-induced cross-subsidization, lack of price transparency, and the consequences of fiscally incentivized employer-based health insurance, we’re left with a labyrinth of regulation that resembles anything but a robust free market.
Instead of creating an American NHS, we should eliminate the tax deduction for employer-based health insurance and expand high-deductible insurance plans and health-savings accounts. Policy experimentation, not mimicry of our OECD peers, is how to begin to rejoin the ranks of nations with high life expectancies.