The US spends far more on health care than any other country in the world, yet in a new study of 17 rich nations, it ranked dead last in life expectancy. The explanation, it seems, is that, compared with people in other rich countries

, far fewer of them reach old age at all. “The death rate for Americans under 50, the report showed, is almost off the comparative charts.” A range of exceptional US factors is to blame: car usage; lack of exercise; junk food; high poverty rates; lack of medical insurance; and violent deaths from guns. If Americans survive all those factors to reach the age of 80, however, they then enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world. That turnaround is partly because US pensioners, unlike their younger compatriots, benefit from the same sort of subsidised medical care as their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. But it’s also because, by that age, a disproportionate number of their poorer peers have been weeded out. It’s “Darwinian”: not so much natural selection as “social selection – the survival of the economically fittest”.  (Harold Meyerson, Washington Post)

No  Epicurean can countenance the inequality inherent in the above.  It is  bad for the country and appalling or the poor people who cannot look forward to a happy retirementMediocre re, the “subsidized care” mentioned above, is however one of the most civilised aspects of American life.  Conservatives everywhere want to scrap it, of course.  Why should they pay taxes for other people’s health?