Life Expectancy

Life Expectancy, by Age

Doctors see frail old people, and sometimes assume they have few remaining days left, and comfort is most important. However at every age we have 8 or more months left, and up to 112 we have over a year of life expectancy left. Those with good minds may want to enjoy that time. With each additional year we live, our life expectancy extends by 9 or 10 months, and with good care and luck we keep living. The data are prepared by the Social Security Administration.
 
CDC has instructions to doctors on filling out death certificates, but there are weaknesses, especially for the minority of patients who die without a recent doctor visit.

An example of under-treating old people is for cancer care, even though most cancer patients are old.

Average Years of Life Remaining, by Age, US Population, 2014

Doctors' Inaccurate Predictions of Life Expectancy

Doctors use many versions of the Charlson Comorbidity Index to estimate life expectancy for patients, depending on their age and illnesses (comorbidities). Many versions are little better than chance in predicting life expectancy.

The C statistic is an estimate, from a research project on particular patients, how often an index is more accurate than chance. Values range from 0.50 (no better than chance) to 1.00 (always right). C statistics for different groups of patients are in supplementary tables 1-4 of Yurkovich et al. (2015) Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. v.68(1):3–14. "A systematic review identifies valid comorbidity indices derived from administrative health data." Details of how big the errors are may be found in the original studies, listed by Yurkovich et al.

An older study is Sharabiani et al. (2012 Dec) Medical Care. v.50(12):1109-18. "Systematic review of comorbidity indices for administrative data." . doi: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e31825f64d0 pubmed.gov/22929993

​US Life Expectancy Stopped Improving 

US life expectancy overall, and specifically for people over 65 was improving steadily until around 2011. Since then it has been flat (Bloomberg, and CDC p.116, table 15).

Life Added by Hospital Treatment

Researchers at Columbia and Yale found that even an extra day of hospital treatment for pneumonia or heart attack saves thousands of lives (Table H). So reducing access to hospital treatment will be deadly.

Table H. Lives Saved by More Hospital Treatment