"Americans are dying younger than Europeans, despite being the wealthiest people on the planet." Devi Sridhar uses that line to push Make America Healthy Again toward Europe, not wellness influencers, and away from the idea that personal discipline alone can fix the US health gap. Her case is blunt: wealth is not closing it. "Wealth won’t change that".
Devi Sridhar on Europe
Sridhar says she is just back from her home country, the United States, and is comparing it with her adopted home of Europe. Her argument starts with a simple mismatch: the United States spends twice as much as comparable countries on healthcare, yet people still die younger.
She points to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine that examined 74,000 adults. In that study, the wealthiest Americans had higher mortality rates than the wealthiest Europeans, and the richest Americans had mortality rates comparable to the poorest residents of northern and western Europe.
Robert F Kennedy Jr and public disapproval
That criticism lands directly on Make America Healthy Again, the movement led by US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. Polling found that 60% of voters disapprove of the job he is doing, which leaves the movement trying to sell a health message while its public face is tied to low approval.
The split is sharper because the movement highlights obesity, diabetes and chronic disease while its image is built around influencers posting from saunas, gyms and parks. Sridhar’s answer is policy, not fads: the United States has one mass shooting per day on average, and the firearm death rate among American children age 0-17 is 72 times higher in the United States than in the UK.
US health gaps
The access problem is just as stark. Around 26 million Americans remain uninsured, and an estimated 57% of underinsured adults delayed or avoided medical care because of cost.
That is why the Europe comparison is more than a slogan. Sridhar is arguing that the real fix runs through the systems that shape death rates: guaranteed healthcare, less violence, and safer roads, not another wellness campaign. The unanswered question is what concrete policy changes would actually close the US-Europe life expectancy gap.
