Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

    Curiously, however, for a system apparently stultified by the dead hand of government, Australia’s health system far outperforms the free market-based US healthcare system, which spends nearly twice as much per capita as Australia to deliver far worse outcomes — including Americans dying five years younger than us.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/10/16/pubic-private-healthcar...

Bypass: https://clearthis.page/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crikey.com.au%2F...

    Overall, we now have the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world.

   This is contrary to the narrative that pervades the media about our health system — one in which our “frontline” health workers heroically battle to overcome government neglect and inadequate spending, while the population is beset by various “epidemics” — obesity, alcohol, illicit drugs.

    In fact, Australian longevity is so remarkable that in August The Economist published a piece simply titled “Why do Australians live so long?”

The Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/08/23/why-do-a...

AU Gov Report: Advances in measuring healthcare productivity https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/measuring-healthcar...

Could this also (partially) be explained by the cost of healthcare? Something like a downwards spiral where average people end up poor either due to direct costs of healthcare or neglecting their own healthcare due to cost?

- greater usage of surgeries and prescriptions, leading to greater exposure to medical malpractice (the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.)

- higher birthrate. more pregnancies.

- less cultural tolerance of abortion. Greater willingness to take on risky pregnancies

- single parent homes (people with less family support)

- ethnicities which are more susceptible to certain disease and lifestyle risks

- greater exposure to crime in impoverished areas

- more life time spent traveling in cars

- more restricted access to health insurance (as you said only accessing healthcare in dire emergency)

The US is a different world than most countries which tend to be geographically tight and culturally homogenous. It's very difficult to make comparisons, not to mention differences in data collection and reporting ethics.

> The US is a different world than most countries which tend to be geographically tight and culturally homogenous

I am not sure how much you know about Australia, but homogeneity and geographically tight is definitely not how you would describe it.