UK healthy life expectancy gap between rich and poor widens

Martin McKee61

We’ve ( @lucindahiam.bsky.social @dannydorling.bsky.social ) been pointing out for years that 🇬🇧 has a health crisis. e.g. we showed how we tumbled down the global rankings throughout the reign of the late Queen journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sweet Teasel57

It feels like the UK is going backwards to Victorian era levels of inequality. Redistribution of wealth & greater investment in public services is needed desperately

Dr Noor Bari56

Promoting disease mediated immunity can’t be helping.

Sally Longford47

In my early working life I was responsible for collecting for retirement gifts and also wreaths in a large industrial department. I was often horrified by the short time between the two collections, particularly for manual workers. We are going back to this & it suits the capitalist system

Buck Frexit44

And Farage wants to make it so that if you can’t afford it, you get no healthcare, making this much worse. No thanks.

Steve Atkins43

I have a suspicion that stress, shit processed food and poisoning our natural environment plays a part!

Catio Miles42

Well, since 2020 we can’t retire to sunnier, warmer places with better food and in fact many had to return from those locations. #Brexit

The grip of private equity on the UK economy , second largest globally after the US .

Russell England 38

Children are also shorter in the UK than Europe due to austerity From 2023

Lynn O'K27

For comparison, in Ireland it has dropped during covid, but is stabilising, and 6 years higher than the UK.

Grace Hurford PhD26

Erm despite the article stating it’s not Covid the figures go off a cliff since 2020. Seems hard to believe this isn’t a factor 🤔

Andrew Sharpe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿|🇪🇺26

Scotland already has "a new strategy to address economic and health inequalities". It's called independence.

Martandelus (Cheez)22

I want you guys to connect the dots here... Why else is the media happily talking about doing away with state pensions? Why does the media talk about "population growth"? Why is everything designed to be so stressful now? Why were we told to gobble every disease known to man? Kerching...

Anaideia22

I wonder if there is a generation that sees their state pension on the distant horizon, sees that it is increasingly unlikely to sustain them, and has no significant private pension. So, work then die, skip the retirement part.

Mazzerooni … -20

Wait until the NHS is fully privatised

Stephen Barlow19

Thank you for saying this George. The whole problem discussing neoliberalism, is that the lying neoliberals, deny neoliberalism exists and it is a left wing conspiracy theory. But facts like this, expose the deep Orwellian lies about what has been happening. 1/2

Sir Basil14

Surely just a manifestation of our long term creep to the right playing out.....the Devil is indeed taking the hindmost

Dave13

And yet the most popular political party in the UK currently would abolish the NHS. Large numbers seem to revel in their ill-health.

Elke Hausmann12

Yes, austerity, yes, inequality, yes, Brexit (which has made the UK even poorer), and due to all this also worse outcomes from Covid - which bizarrely is discounted as a cause in this article and I presume the original report 🧐 #LongCovid

Kathleenna12

The US is on the same trajectory. Might surpass UK as we are being held hostage by a Fascist Felon, his corrupt Scotus, and insatiable Billionaires.

Looking at the stars12

I wonder whether the chronic underfunding of the NHS and (particularly) social care are drivers in the mix.

kevindunn.bsky.social11

Healthy life expectancy below state pension age is the very definition of "work till you drop".

Monty Dodge11

Some of the things that made me feel ill. bsky.app/profile/mont...

DavidxRose10

Rising health inequality is a gold standard measurement of a sick neo liberal mis directed economy.

David Bruce 🇳🇬🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿10

I recall a day, 2007ish, there was a feelgood article at the end of news bulletins - more of us could expect to live to 100. Hurrah! That, I believe is the origin of ukgov austerity - to ensure that doesn’t happen. The rich see every penny spent on pensions and benefits as a penny they can’t steal.

Joy10

Also the move from buying fresh food at butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers etc to buying it all at supermarkets is huge. Most have even removed fresh food counters & now everything is prepacked & therefore full of ultra processed ingredients to make them last. It also makes them more profit.

The Lady Lucy 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺🇬🇱🇺🇦🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🐾🐕10

14 years, at least, of underfunding in the NHS?

Ann Marie Connolly 9

Decline coincided with Tory extensive austerity measures. All public services are now threadbare. Local authority budgets were redirected to wealthier areas and made inequalities worse. Decline started around 2014 and has not stopped. Brexit makes it worse. Outcome of ideology & voted for by people.

omgstarsk.bsky.social9

Lack of Covid mitigations still despite recommendations for clean air, masking in poorly ventilated places and very low vaccines available.

Kath M Cymru8

So, while the healthy life expectancy is falling, the pension age is rising. 🤔 Throw in Farage's desire for an 'insurance based' healthcare system. We better keep Reform out or we are screwed.

seacide7

This isn't surprising. It's perfectly consistent with predictions, unfortunately. Regardless of effects of the pandemic we're still in, divesting from society, especially NHS and promoting poverty, has conspired with unhealthy lifestyles, poor diets and pollution. The neoliberal exposome is deadly.

Ms Robot (governed by idiots)6

I'm 60 next month and I have lost so many friends! Some didn't even make it to my age, and others only made it to a few years older. The state pension age needs to be brought down, not constantly rising like it is now. Thousands of poorer working class people will never live to collect their pension

Mark Ungrin6

There's a lot of Bad Stuff going on around the world...

Jill Houlbrook6

No mystery it’s reflection of what this society has become over the years. The wealth of our nation is increasingly held in the hands of the powerful for whom it has become a weapon. We only have to look to USA to see where we are heading. It’s us the people with the power to stop the rot.

anty41.bsky.social6

And systematic destruction/sell off of the NHS

Diane Purkiss5

Just a further aspect of Boris Johnson saying “let the bodies pile high“. They know that their own life expectancies won’t be affected. If they could still send children down coalmines they would do it.

Kittie 🖤🦝5

The social safety net of UC is definitionally destitution. If you end up on this due to illness you get trapped just keeping your head above water every day as it rises incrementally. You don’t have the emotional or practical resources for recovery

AdyBee 🐝5

The Establishment WANT people to die. You can’t argue with demography. #FallingBirthRates #SizeMatters #Boomers #Pensions #BoiledFrog

cheryldb.bsky.social4

The age of retirement will still be increased though.

Rachael4

@georgemonbiot.bsky.social COVID may also be impacting which is not being discussed currently

J Green4

Did something start in 2020 that might be causing harm to workers in healthcare, services and teaching?

Nualaatpeace4

Successive unfit governance. Corruption instead of people. NHS corruption. Privatisation in all our services. Profiteering 💯

Anderbergskan4

"And, yes, there are lots of confounding factors for mortality rates. It's a complex and messy statistic. But people aren't just faking dying. " Deaths in service. Rolling annual rates per 100K staff NHS👇 threadreaderapp.com/thread/20390... also sickness rates on YT www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJw3...

OhNo!NotHimAgain3

The quality of our 'fresh' fruit & veg has declined dramatically since Brexit. Supermarkets are sourcing more from countries beyond the EU. Add in disease problems, notably oranges & bananas, caused by climate change & increased travel times. By the time food reaches our homes it's barely edible.

jamiecrock.bsky.social3

The rich get richer and the poor die!

Brizo75 🇵🇸 🇺🇸 🇬🇧3

What marks us out as uniquely broken, is that this country falls under two spheres of influence and no leader has ever asked the question; "Do you want taxes and services like the US or like Scandinavia?" Instead we play out this economic and political farce as if the best of both is possible.

Debbie Fearon (she/her)3

Sir Michael Marmot right now

Plastic Fenian: London-Born, Swiss roots.3

and the only nation within this perfidious union that HAS improved is Northern Ireland. A country that is still in the single-market and customs union area of the EU. Is there a connection between availabilty of drugs/food (and quality of the latter)? Environmental and work-place protections?

iamluken.bsky.social3

Reform will only make it worse with their culture war on healthy food, non drinkers plus their policy of bring back smoking in pubs

Alan Chedzoy2

The report is complex and would need close examination to unravel the causes of the difference in say Norway at the top and the UK. The last bullet point under "key points" talks about putting health on a par with economic growth which implies you cant have one without the other which I'd challenge.

Stevie2

Who is paying the Ferryman? It certainly isn’t the well off as poverty and disease claim only the poor.

isoma2

"The gap between the most and least deprived deciles in England is now 19.4 years for males and 20.3 years for females." That's the big challenge.

12 Spoons 🇺🇦2

And to address it they increase the pension retirement age so less payouts

Can anyone help me with this bit? “UK level, life expectancy has remained broadly stable, indicating that the drop in healthy life expectancy is largely driven by self-reported health and cannot simply be explained by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic”. I’ll keep trying, but I don’t fathom it !

Joy13

Healthy food is more & more expensive, things that the common people used to buy are now called 'artisan' & and cost a fortune while poorer people are buying ultra processed crap in supermarkets as it's all they can afford.

PeteGulls6

Years of Tory neglect. A truly shocking article.

Karen by name not nature! 📎 🦋6

As a community nurse providing care to housebound patients I see this. Our patients are younger and sicker.

Bob Medley5

In the most deprived areas in Scotland healthy life expectancy is only 44. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Iris Cook3

Correction Brexit is excelling the speed

Terry Morgan2

Deregulation of banking, was a factor in the 2008 crash which was then used as justification for austerity and greater wealth concentration than ever before. The rich just getting richer. Poor getting sicker earlier.

Me & Taylor2

Chronic underfunding of the NHS doesn't help, either.

Wren 💙2

"Governments have done too little to address a rising burden of often avoidable illness" They could start by sorting out the desperate state of dentistry. In so many areas, NHS Dentists just aren't available anymore, even for children. Preventative care & prompt treatment saves misery & money.

SteveWhiteraven2

thats why the rich MPs think we can all retire at 70...so the poor never get to claim a pension