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US Death Rate Rises, Health Officials Aren't Sure Why

Slashdot: Science - Fetched: June 2nd, 2016, 2:00am UTC

New submitter Ungrounded Lightning writes: According to The New York Times, the U.S. death rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade (or several decades if particular). The rise is across the whole population, though whites, especially the less educated among them, were recently (and separately) documented to be particularly hard hit. The article speculates about drug abuse (prescription as well as illegal), suicides, and Alzheimer's, though it notes that heart disease -- which had been consistently dropping -- has also risen. No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect. The aging of the population was mentioned, though the rise is present even within particular age groups. The National Center for Health Statistics shows the adjusted death rate went up from 723 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 to nearly 730 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. We do know that the suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades.pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=US+Death+Rate+Rises%2C+Health+Officials+Aren't+Sure+Why%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1UvI9fV"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F16%2F06%2F01%2F2354246%2Fus-death-rate-rises-health-officials-arent-sure-why%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a class="nobg" href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/06/01/2354246/us-death-rate-rises-health-officials-arent-sure-why?utm_source=slashdotamp;utm_medium=googleplus" onclick="javascript:window.open(this.href,'', 'menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,height=600,width=600');return false;"img src="http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" alt="Share on Google+"//a /div/ppa href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/06/01/2354246/us-death-rate-rises-health-officials-arent-sure-why?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~4/hRNXgW3iFE0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

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