It was one thing when the numbers showed that the United States was not keeping up with other advanced countries in life expectancy. It's another thing to observe that we're actually backsliding, losing time off our collective life expectancy.
An analysis of the numbers shows just that trend, and it is highlighted in a new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association. People in the middle of life are dying, from drug overdoses and organ failures and other causes. Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University is the lead author of the paper, and our guest.