[bobkazamakis]

>it’s somewhat unhelpful to consider the US one country.

it is one country, and no amount of clever word play or stat juking will change that.

"ah well, states are the real government" is always a great way to dodge problems.

"gun laws are strict in chicago but people still die from gun violence!"

[Supermancho]

> it is one country, and no amount of clever word play or stat juking will change that.

That's not relevant to the point. As a geographic feature, the US is disparate and even the urban centers persist under wildly different conditions. Looking at it from a perspective OTHER than how humans classify their societies, might give some insight. Generally scientists are interested in data in aggregate that ignore the arbitrary lines drawn generations ago for human edification.

That's how you could graciously interpret the gp's comment, even if you disagree that it's a useful viewpoint.

[shmatt]

Guns, easily transferred beyond state lines, are very different. You can't move health insurance beyond state lines

And just one more example into why its not 1 healthcare country - to be able to pass the ACA, some provisions had to be "opt in" for state legislators to adopt. So if you were born in the wrong state, even when the ACA passed, you still didnt get some of its positives effects

[googlryas]

OP said it was unhelpful to consider it one country, not that it was untrue to consider it one country.

I think this is true in the same way that it is unhelpful to talk about the mean net worth of 10 individuals in a room if one of them is Elon Musk.

And, in fact, treating the US as "different countries" is exactly what the author does - by pointing out that it is low-income Americans who actually suffer the burden of lower life expectancy rather than an across the board radical lowering of life expectancy for all Americans compared to other rich nations.

[notch656a]

Please go to American Samoa and then Rhode Island and explain how it's not unreasonable to look at things this way. The US is so big and so different in some areas, some people in the USA even get passports that say they're not even US citizens even though they were born in the USA.