Campaign Finance Reform as a Health Issue in the USA

Excerpt

Life expectancy in the USA peaked in 2014, with a lower life expectancy in 2018 than in 2014.¹ No other high-income country has undergone a similar phenomenon since World War I, which points to the extraordinary circumstance that the USA finds itself in. While the rise of the opioid epidemic plays a role, it only explains about 20–25% of the increase in deaths. The remaining deaths stem from a combination of suicide, stroke, influenza, Alzheimer’s, and liver disease. Deaths from some of these diseases have been rising since around 2000; however, their effects on overall life expectancy were offset by decades of steadily declining mortality from cardiovascular diseases. This decline in cardiovascular mortality is now plateauing, and it is the sum total of these trends that have caused life expectancy to start declining in the past few years.² …