Life Expectancy Revisited
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Happy Thursday Healthcare Advocates
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Warning
Below part of the discussion involves suicides. You can call the national suicide and crisis helpline at 988 anytime for help.
Alzheimer News - Watch This Space
Alzheimer’s is horrible. My aunt had it and it killed her. The father of one my good friends had it and it killed him. The gradual disappearance of the person you know and love in right in front of your eyes is heart wrenching. Here is a link to the Alzheimer’s Association if you need information or support. They have a 24/7 help line.
Some medications have recently been in trials to slow the progress of this debilitating disease. CMS announced recently that if the FDA approves the drugs then Medicare part B will pay if the patient is in a setting where data of the drug’s effectivity can be accessed. The access will be to so-called registries that support the study of Alzheimer’s. You can read more here. This is not new. CMS calls it Coverage with Evidence and it has been used in the past to get cardiac medications to certain patients and then to track effectiveness.
There is debate about this technique. The Alzheimer’s Association and PhRMA, the drug industry lobbying group both want coverage without registry’s. If the drug’s were not expensive ($26,000/year) then perhaps we would be having a different discussion.
ACTION
The Alzheimer’s Association has a petition you can sign to tell President Biden and your representatives in Congress that you want Medicare to cover Alzheimer’s medications without registry’s making them more available. Their petition is here. After you click to sign the petition a letter to Congress pops up.
Life Expectancy
We have written about life expectancy previously. Ours in the US is declining, while it is increasing in our peer industrialized countries all of whom have universal healthcare. I heard a podcast this week on the subject and thought I would share it with you. It is a little complicated - hold on.
In the podcast, Chris Hayes interviews two health care researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton. They are researchers at Princeton and have been investigating the downward trend in life expectancy for quite a while. They identified the relationship between education and lifespan in 2018. The article is here. They have also written a book on the subject called “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism”.
What they find is that the change in society over the last more than 50 years has had a significantly negative impact on those unable to adapt. Part of the changes are the need for more skilled, highly educated workers, as automation began to take hold in the economy. For instance, the need for more engineering increased in this period as did the need for other college degrees. There is a significant wage discrepancy between those with and without college degrees. There is a relationship between good jobs and how you feel about yourself, having a family, and support systems around you. Often, the ability to advance in employment is tied to education. When people fail to advance, have more stagnant or declining wages, despair sets in and often so do related behaviors, such as drug and alcohol use, which take a toll on life expectancy. Of course, in severe cases so do suicides. Interestingly there was no disparity related to race in their findings.
One of the comments made by Anne Deaton really caught my attention. She said that many years ago, it was not that uncommon for people to start at the bottom rung of a company and work their way up. The mail clerk or window washer could actually advance in the company and eventually have a good job. However, after WWII, when our European peers implemented Universal Healthcare and we did not (thank you President Eisenhower for that). It became expensive to have low level employees with healthcare and so many of those jobs were outsourced to companies that offered no chance of upward mobility and thus the path to advancement was narrowed.
Universal Healthcare is not a cure-all but I was surprised to see that not having played such an important part in the way our economy has evolved.
We can make it better for so many with Universal Healthcare. You know what to do.
Action
Tell your Representative and senators in Congress and the President it is time to support Universal Healthcare.
“My name is [name] and I am your constituent in [zipcode] and it is time for Congress to support Universal Healthcare, HR 3421 or S 1655. It will make employees more affordable to businesses. It will keep people from being tied to a job just to have healthcare. Remember what happened in the pandemic when millions lost their jobs and healthcare? And by lowering the cost we spend as a nation on healthcare our competitiveness world wide will increase.
You can find their phone/email in the resources below or use Resistbot on your cell phone by texting SIGN PXOXIT to 50409 to send that the message above.
Find My Elected Officials
Contact the White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Contact State and Federal Representatives
https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/addr/
Important Healthcare Resources
League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit
Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare
Healthcare Advocacy Reading List
Organizations to Contact
NARAL - Pro Choice America
Planned Parenthood
Physicians for a National Health Plan
Claims Denials and Appeals & What to Do
Appeal a Healthcare Decision
Appeal/Negotiate a Hospital Bill
Save Democracy
Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens
RESISTBOT
Link to the RESISTBOT site to learn more
Link to Chop Wood, Carry Water Resistbot write up