This is bigger than COVID: Why are so many Americans dying early?
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf recently took to X to mourn the “
catastrophic” decline in U.S. life expectancy.
But his post, which hit on smoking, diet, chronic illness and health care, ignored the obvious: People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent (Gee, I wonder why?)
Life insurers have been consistently sounding the alarm over these unexpected or,
“excess,” deaths, which claimed
158,000 more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019. That exceeds America’s combined losses from
every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.
With the worst of COVID behind us (Oh really?), annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans. Instead, the death toll remains
“alarming,” “disturbing,” and deserving of “
urgent attention,” according to insurance industry articles.
