Thanks to Mark Steyn for reminding people that this life-expectancy stuff is wildly overblown. It’s funny: Whenever liberals want to indict the American health-care system (which I do think needs reforming, just not Obama-style) in sober, pragmatic, terms they go to life expectancy. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Michael Bloomberg invoked Europe’s higher life expectancies as prima facie evidence that we have to “reform” health care. But when liberals are passionate about health-care reform amongst themselves it has nothing to do with “extending” life expectancy (as if it would save money, by the way, to have millions more really, really, old people in America). When discussing health-care “reform” amongst themselves, they admit that they want to do it for matters of social justice, equality, etc. And that’s fine, but life expectancy is only tangentially related to all of that.
Here’s the thing. If we get the P4 (public-plan poison pill), and liberals get their way, life expectancy isn’t going to rise appreciably. And if it does rise, health-care costs are going to go up. It’s a total red herring.