Mountain
Women Die Younger
A national study shows females in poor areas
like Radford and Pulaski have diminished life
expectancies. Poor diet and lack of insurance are
likely culprits.
Virginia
is supposed to be a place for miracle drugs and
non-invasive surgery. Preventive medicine is
supposed to spot problems before they become
lethal. High-tech MRIs and CAT scans can detect
diseases like cancer before it can spread. If
necessary, complex surgical procedures that would
have required a half day in full-dress surgery
followed by six weeks of recoup now can be
performed in a couple of hours in an outpatient
setting.
So,
it comes as a bit of a shocker to realize that in
some parts of Virginia, life expectancies for
women are actually declining. That is the case in
mountain areas such as Radford and Pulaski. In
1983, females living in those areas could expect
to live 84 years. By 1999, according to The
Washington Post, it had dropped by 5.8 years
to 78.
The
trend in those spots of the Old Dominion was
repeated in other sections of the U.S., notably in
the Deep South around the Mississippi Delta, in
some parts of the Upper Plains and in the Southern
Appalachia coalfields not far from Pulaski and
Radford. All in all, life expectations for females
dropped in 1,000 counties in the U.S. These
findings come from a recent report put together by
researchers from the University of Washington, The
University of California, San Francisco and
Harvard.
As
in Pulaski and Radford, the common denominator
seemed to be that areas showing the declines had
lower per capita incomes, less education and
locations remote from urban areas. The reports did
not posit any reasons for the decline in female
health.
Media
reports, however, suggest that the deteriorating
mortality rates may have a lot to do with
lifestyles and eating habits. I buy that and have
one more to add – the growing crisis in health
insurance, or the lack of it, for lower income
people.
The
Washington Post sent a reporter to check and
she came up with a portrait of not-well-educated
females leading sedentary life styles, spending a
lot of time on their sofas or pickup truck seats.
They drive a lot and when they eat they munch out
on “Hamburger Row,” a line of high-carb,
high-fat fast food joints near a bridge linking
Radford with Pulaski, the Post says.
Besides
super-sized fries and soft drinks and Double
Whoppers, the ladies also like cigarettes and
beer. This adds up to weight gain which in turn
leads to what one local general surgeon calls the
“Five Fs” – “female, forty, fertile, fair
and fat.” The oversized ladies are prone to
diabetes, vascular and heart issues and cancer.
To
be sure, country folk have a culture of eating
high calorie, greasy foods. Doing so is a
throwback to the days when people needed hundreds
of extra calories since they were so busy in
manual farm labor. I noticed it last December when
my daughter and I stopped for dinner at a local
restaurant in Norton when we were working on a
report on the Dominion coal-fired plant in Wise
County. The buffet was groaning with fried
chicken, greasy ribs, mashed potatoes and gravy,
macaroni and cheese, collard greens, drop
biscuits, corn bread, pasta salad and various
desserts deluged with whipped cream and
confectioners’ sugar. To be honest, I love that
type of fare and was lucky my wife wasn’t
around.
But
combining that kind of Sunday dinner with double
quarter pounders with cheese on a daily basis is
deadly. So is the utter dependency on automobiles
as Ed Risse and Jim Bacon write about so often on
this blog.
There
is another factor that must play a role. Are these
mountain women getting health insurance? It’s a
fair question since most health insurance is
provided by employers that are in decline in
Radford and Pulaski. Wal-Mart split Pulaski,
and furniture plants, a local mainstay, have
shuttered because of Chinese competition. Even the
local Volvo plant is swarming with layoff rumors.
It seems likely that when people are laid off,
they go without insurance. COBRA, the government,
stop-gap insurance, is extremely expensive and has
a limited longevity.
I
couldn’t get to the area to report on my own, so
I am going to borrow a passage from author Joe
Bageant’s wonderful book, “Deer Hunting with
Jesus.” He writes about Winchester, but his
portrait is universal. One of the locals he
describes is Dottie, a 59-year-old, 300-pound
woman who regularly belts out Patsy Cline songs at
a local karaoke bar. Dottie started working when
she was 13 and married at 15. She had to stop
working several years ago due to poor health.
He
writes: “True to our class, Dottie is disabled
by heart trouble, diabetes, and several other
diseases. Her blood pressure is so high the doctor
thought the pressure device was broken. And she is
slowly going blind to boot. Trouble is, insurance
costs her as much as rent. Her old man makes $8 an
hour washing cars at a dealership, and if
everything goes just right they have about $55 a
week left for groceries, gas and everything
else.” When she applies for public assistance,
the local social security workers deny her
application, saying she’s able to work.
I
know that many Bacon's Rebellion readers
are rich Republicans who probably will put a
dismissive, cruel and Calvinistic spin on this.
They will just say these people should be in
control of their lives and if they can’t control
their diet, stop smoking and get some exercise,
then they deserve to die.
I
see a far deeper problem and it starts with
providing decent health insurance and health
education in places where it is most needed. The
time seems to have come when health care should be
universal and should be government-mandated and
controlled. Obviously, private sector health care
is failing miserably, at least in Pulaski and
Radford and 1,000 counties in the U.S. The new
mortality study is just an early warning siren.
--
May 5, 2008
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