Nearly 50 percent more people die in the five highest mortality US states than do in the five lowest mortality states, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report reveals.
In Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia, there are nearly 927,000 deaths per 100,000 people each year.
By contrast, just 624 per 100,000 people died on average each year in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota and New York.
Rates of respiratory disease deaths and unintentional injuries – including drug overdoses – were about twice as high in the states with the highest rates, suggesting smoking and the opioid epidemic are driving the disparities.
CDC figures reveal that overall death rates were nearly 50% higher for men and women living in Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Alabama (blue) than were death rates by any cause in New York, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota and California (dark green) in 2017
In the US 43.1 million people live in below the poverty line, and nearly a third of the population lives near the poverty line.
Forty-four million don’t have health insurance and another 38 million have insufficient healthcare.
This leaves them at greater risk of dying of chronic disease or in an accident than their more wealthy or well-covered counterparts.
Health, like wealth, is not distributed evenly across the nation, and sadly where one lives has considerable bearing on the odds that any given person develops or survives an illness.
Although the number of people who die from each varies wildly, the top causes of death were consistent from state to state in 2017.
Heart disease remains the number one killer, no matter where you live, claiming 217.3 million out of every 100,000 lives in the states with the highest death rates and 149.2 in the lowest death rate states.
Cancer deaths were almost 30 percent more common in the Southern and Appalachian states than states with lower death rates, and the worse-off states had nearly 40 percent more deaths from cancer than did the healthier ones.
The widest gap between the two sets of states fell in lung and unintentional injury deaths.
In Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and West Virginia, the collective average death rate from respiratory illnesses was twice as high as that of the five least fatal states.
While states like New York – where, combined with the other four low death rate states, respiratory illnesses killed about 31 out of 100,000 people – have raised prices and taxes to discourage tobacco smoking, tobacco prices remain low in places like Kentucky and West Virginia.
Tobacco is big business in these areas, and thought to influence regulation and laws.
In New York, cigarettes cost about $13 a pack. In Kentucky, Alabama and West Virginia, the average price is a bout $5.50.
So people continue to smoke these affordable cigarettes, and continue to develop and die of respiratory diseases.
Deaths from unintentional injuries were also nearly twice as common in the worse-off states than in those with the lower death rates.
Although this category includes workplace injuries and car crashes, it also encompasses drug overdoses.
And drugs and alcohol also drive up the number of fatal car accidents in these states.
Experts widely blame the opioid epidemic for these precipitous increases.
Nowhere is more gripped by the drug epidemic than West Virginia, which has the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in the nation.