Cozy Corner

Steve Sernberg over at USA Today demonstrates his "grasp" of the English language:

America is a nation divided by vast differences in life expectancy, a "longevity gap" that can't be readily explained by race, income or access to health care, a study reported Monday.

They found that life expectancy differences are driven mainly by chronic diseases in young and middle-aged adults.
...
The longest living group, "America One," consists of 10.4 million Asians, with an average life expectancy of 85....That's 27 years longer than the average 58-year life expectancy of Native Americans in South Dakota.
...
The second group, "America Two," indicates that income isn't the key to a longer life span. This group is made up of 3.6 million low-income whites living in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana and Nebraska, with an average life expectancy of 79.
...
The 214 million people in "America Three," the bulk of the population, have an average life expectancy of 78. Next, in rank order, come poor whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley with an average life expectancy of 75, Western Native Americans, who live to an average of 73, and black middle America, also 73. Low-income Southern rural blacks and high-risk urban blacks, "Americas Seven and Eight," live to 71.

Every grouping he lists is identified by race or economics. I think he isn't able to have one sentence which says, "If you're Native American or black, your life expectancy is shorter than if you're white or Asian." Oh wait, he could have said that. But this is the point that closes out his story, which is his real problem:

Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth says much of the variation depends on such individual factors as diet, exercise and smoking, not health care. "Yet we spend much of our attention and 16% of our national income on health care," Skinner says. "There's no way that differences in the quality of health care can explain 20-year gaps in life expectancy."