Coss Effective

Health care is already a key topic for this upcoming presidential race. Hillary is staking most of here campaign on the notion that some how she has figured out how best to provide health care to everyone, even those who don’t want it. What will certainly come up is the gap between the rich and the poor with regard to life expectancy. Before this gets out of hand, a few thoughts.

Wealth is largely dependent upon some other variables, one could be born into it, build it through hard work and education, and or be provided with special talents as in musicians or sports figures. Either way, not all of these characteristics are directly under the control of the individual, less one: education.

In today’s New York Times piece “Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation” I fear that few will read the complete, well written piece, and instead gleam from that which suits them best. So I thought I might point to the core of the article: education matters. Cited also in the article is a quote from Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School, who found that in the 1980s and 1990s, “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly educated groups.” Note also that that same group, tends to earns more.