110 - Is the US Paying the Price for Ignoring Universal Healthcare? Italy's Numbers Say Yes and Why Physicians NEED to Pay Attention

Why do Italians live longer than Americans? Is it just the pasta, or is there something more to it?

Italy ranks 7th in global life expectancy while the US lags behind at 48th. Understanding the lifestyle, diet, and healthcare systems that support this longevity can offer valuable lessons for physicians and patients alike.

 In this episode, you'll discover:

• The surprising connection between low birth rates and long lives.
• Why healthcare access might be the secret ingredient to longevity.
• How diet and culture impact life expectancy.

Ready to learn the secrets behind Italy’s long lives? Hit play now and see how these insights could reshape your approach to healthcare.

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.396)
By the end of this episode, you'll know why Italians are outliving Americans and what we're missing that could be costing us years. Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. In this episode, you'll discover the surprising connection between low birth rates and long lives, why healthcare access might be the secret ingredient to longevity,

and how diet and culture impacts life expectancy. Welcome to another episode of the Independent Physicians Blueprint with your host, Coach JPMD. That's me. And we're back with another episode on longevity and life expectancy summary. We've been reviewing the top 10 countries in the world that live longer than the rest of the population.

And definitely more than and longer than the US. As you know, the US ranks 48th in the world in terms of life expectancy. And we've been going over the top 10. Number 10 was reunion. Number nine was Spain. Number eight was Singapore. And today number seven is Italy. And why am I doing this? Well, I think one of things I wanted to find out was what other countries are doing.

that we in the US can do to help improve our longevity. And there's some things that are kind of creeping up in my research. And at the end of the series, we're going to, or at least I'm going to, kind of summarize what I think, maybe even create a one page report that kind of shows you the differences and shows you how we as physicians can maybe do things in our community to help our populations live on. So today's Italy.

So where's Italy? Italy is in Europe and it's in the Southeast portion of Europe. Borders Switzerland, borders France on one side of the West, Austria and Slovenia on the East. And I think it's also bordering Germany. So Italy is really has a large border in the northern part of the country.

Coach JPMD (02:25.344)
and it's just north of Tunisia and sits in the Mediterranean Sea. Population of 59,176,000. And the thing that struck me was that they have universal healthcare. And I guess it's like most European countries, but Italy prides itself in providing healthcare to all of their citizens.

And those that wish to have shorter wait times for care can opt to participate in private pay insurance as well. There's about 3.2 beds per thousand in terms of hospitals compared to the US, it's got 2.7 beds per thousand. And definitely, and more than Spain.

They've got more hospitals per thousand inhabitants than Spain, which has 3.0. They have four physicians per thousand and 4.6 physician per thousand in Spain. So that was a little different. We also have, we also know that their religion is mainly Christianity. 74 % of Italians are Catholic.

One of the things that I found that was interesting was that in Italy, their birth rate is actually very low and actually maybe decreasing, which could be one of the reasons why their longevity or their life expectancy is higher because the life expectancy numbers is an average number of how long their populations live. And so if you're not having babies, then...

the older population will skew those numbers. Their diet is mainly a Mediterranean diet. They eat a lot of vegetables, olives, olive oils, and we know that the Mediterranean diet is linked to longevity as well. As far as mortality, so I think the data on mortality, which was disconcerting that

Coach JPMD (04:44.962)
the World Health Organization did not have the latest mortality data on the website. So I went to their website and the immortality date mortality data is from 2021 and more Italians die of ischemic heart disease than any other disease. COVID was number two, strokes were number three.

Alzheimer's disease was number four and lung cancer was number five. So top four diseases are inflammatory diseases. It's getting to the point where I'm realizing that one of the themes is that healthcare is a priority for the government. This is something that we definitely need to address in this country. So I don't want to go down this route yet. And giving you my thoughts are, but you know that

You've heard it about Spain and you heard about Reunion. And so I'm going to continue this episode series and kind of delve into why other countries are living long.

and who they are. Australia is our next country. Just to summarize, Italy, number seventh, ranks number seventh in terms of life expectancy in the world. Their population lives to be 84 on average, and females live to be 86, and males have to be 81, and that is...

That is common theme. So next week, we're going to discuss Australia and see what they're doing down there to see if we can get some pointers or some tips for us folks in the US. So what you learned today is that Italy ranked seventh in the global life expectancy offers some powerful lessons for physicians from their universal health system to the longevity boosting benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Italy's approach to health

Coach JPMD (06:38.88)
is a blueprint for better living. As physicians, we have the opportunity to bring these insights into our practices, focusing on prevention, whole person care, and community outreach. Next up, we head down under to explore what Australians are doing to secure its spot among the world's longest living populations. Until then, keep building that independent blueprint for better health. you so much for listening to the podcast. If you'd to hear more, subscribe, follow your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss an episode.