Healthcare Tidbit

I thought this was enlightening information regarding comparative healthcare costs. There seems to be a delicate balance of spending too little or spending too much to achieve greater life expectancy.

Life Span vs. Life Expectancy

There are two kinds of life span. One is maximum life span, the greatest age reached by any member of a species. In humans this is currently about 120 years. (The oldest confirmed recorded age for any human is 122 years). The other is average life span, the average age reached by members of a population.

Life expectancy is the number of remaining years an individual can expect to live, based on his or her current age and average life spans. Life expectancy generally quoted is the ''at birth'' number which is an average that includes all the babies that die before their first year of life as well as people that die from disease, war, etc. For example, the Life Expectancy table at the University of Texas shows ''at birth'' the life expectancy was 25, but at the age of 5 it jumped to 48. So life expectancy changes with your age.

Mozambique has the lowest life expectancy for its population at 39.2. Japan is the highest at 82.7 and the US is 38th at 78.2 years.