It seems to me that there has been relatively little written about the current major public heath crisis in the U.S., the opioid epidemic and deaths of despair. (see: Every American family basically pays an $8,000 ‘poll tax’ under the U.S. health system, top economists say)
...[Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton] have risen to prominence in recent years for their work on America’s “deaths of despair.” They discovered Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 have been committing suicide, overdosing on opioids or dying from alcohol-related problems like liver disease at skyrocketing rates since 2000. These “deaths of despair” have been especially large among white Americans without college degrees as job options have rapidly declined for them. Their forthcoming book, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,” includes a scathing chapter examining how the U.S. health-care system has played a key role in these deaths. The authors call out pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, device manufacturers and doctors for their roles in driving up costs and creating the opioid epidemic.
Why is the opioid crisis not the subject of intense debate in the public health community and among state and national politicians for solutions beyond limitations on opioid prescriptions (see: Overwhelmed by all the multi-million dollar opioid settlements? Here's everything you need to know)? The root causes of this problem were stated clearly in a recent opinion piece in the NYT (see: Who Killed the Knapp Family?). Below is an excerpt from it:
It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs for [deaths of despair]: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. The United States wrested power from labor and gave it to business, and it suppressed wages and cut taxes rather than invest in human capital, as our peer countries did. As other countries embraced universal health care, we did not; several counties in the United States have life expectancies shorter than those in Cambodia or Bangladesh.
Deaths of despair are a national problem that require a national solution that can be described in the following way: how do we bring decent jobs back to "small town America" in an information economy that requires a high degree of education to qualify for the higher paying jobs? Some of the federal money that is now being used to prop up authoritarian regimens abroad should be redirected to assist our own citizens as they struggle to earn an adequate income and stay healthy.