Socialized Medicine & Life Expectancy

Inversely related

During the Soviet years, life expectancy in Russia stayed low (male life expectancy only 62 years in 1976). That’s because socialized medicine — and the political system behind it — is not good at keeping people alive.

While Americans in the 1970s and 1980s may have looked at the low life expectancy of Russia and quietly affirmed to themselves: “It can’t happen here” — those who lived through the COVID debacle would beg to differ.

It did happen here:

Prior to the implementation of socialized (top-down; bureaucratized) medicine in the USA, life expectancy was rising. Here is the same graph with notes in it showing that what has happened to US medical care is appalling:

But the real lesson that was never learned was that of the 30 million premature deaths seen in Communist China — enough death to drive even the world life expectancy down:

Here is the same graph with notes in it:

Reference

[Soviet male life expectancy only 62 years in 1976; Figure 1] — Brainerd, E. Mortality in Russia Since the Fall of the Soviet Union. Comp Econ Stud 63, 557–576 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41294-021-00169-w