#771 Obituary

When they write the obituary for America, they’ll say, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming.
For years, I’ve been carrying on about aspects of American living that are unhealthy. Fast food, food additives, smoking, laziness, and the couch potato lifestyle. How fast food calories stay with you even more because you burn no calories in either the preparation or the clean-up of your meals.
And yet everyone secretly says, yeah but, people in the US are living longer, so it can’t be all bad. In the back of our minds we’ve held onto the notion that, oh sure, we may need a little tune-up, but by and large the car’s running just fine. The dials and meters make it seem like we’re about to explode and run into a ditch but it’s a good vehicle and a good road and that weird humming noise sounds too pleasant to be dangerous.
Well, things turned a corner and there’s a big ditch cut right across the road like a rip in an exploded artery. For the first time in a century, life expectancy in the US has fallen.
So far, it’s mostly in poor rural areas. Rich folk have access to health care and, thanks to advances in modern medicine, can buy off some of the effects of bad living.
But in southwestern Virginia, poor folk, especially poor women, are dying from the ravages of obesity, smoking and unhealthy habits. Lung cancer, diabetes and kidney failure have driven the life expectancy five years lower than it was in 1983.
I can hear you out there. What’s that got to do with me and my lack of exercise and passion for fast food? I’ve got health insurance.
Hey, you know, medical care is a good thing. Just like Band-Aids are a good product. But just because I can put on a Band-Aid, that doesn’t mean I go around cutting myself.
Here’s a sobering fact: The US ranks 41st in the world in life expectancy. That’s right, the wealthiest country in the world and we are 41st in life expectancy.
Right between Bosnia and Albania.
Thank God we beat Albania.
America, ya gotta love it.