Homeless will be the Donald Trump benchmark

Although Republicans followed, like political lemmings, while Donald Trump forced through tax cuts for his rich friends, the fact is, his failed administration will be marked by increasing homelessness and a drop in America's life expectancy.  Sadly, the economic disparity in America just widened. The rich just got richer when the greedy Republicans passed their tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthy, at the expense of investing in improving the American human condition.

It's a blue Christmas and Holiday for the homeless and families who have suffered from the negative impact of substance abuse morbidity and mortality.

It's not even close to a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays in 2017, or into the New Year, for the homeless and the families where substance addiction disorders have taken a toll on morbidity and mortality.

In fact, for the first time in 7 years, the number of homeless people in America has increased. 

Unfortunately, for the first time in seven years, the number of people without a safe, regular place to sleep in America has grown. On any given night in 2017, nearly 554,000 people across the country were homeless, just under a 1 percent rise above 2016 levels.

Moreover, the life expectancy in America declined for two years in a row, a statistic driven by the nation's opioid addiction and substance abuse crises. "The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased from 6.1 per 100,000 standard population in 1999 to 19.8 in 2016"~ Holly Hedegaard, M.D., used data from the National Vital Statistics System to update trends in drug overdose deaths.

(HealthDay News) — From 2015 to 2016, life expectancy decreased by one-tenth of a year, and there was an increase in the rate of age-adjusted drug overdose deaths, according to two December data briefs published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

Kenneth D. Kochanek, from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues examined 2016 U.S. mortality data and considered demographic and medical characteristics. The authors note that life expectancy was 78.6 years for the U.S. population in 2016, a decrease of one-tenth of a year from 2015. There was a 0.6 percent decrease in the age-adjusted death rate, from 733.1 to 728.8 deaths per 100,000 standard population. The 10 leading causes of death remained the same in 2016 as in 2015.

Ten leading causes of deaths in America in 2016:

• Heart disease.
• Cancer (malignant neoplasms)
• Chronic lower respiratory disease.
• Accidents (unintentional injuries)~ opioids and substance abuse
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)
• Alzheimer's disease.
• Diabetes.
• Influenza and pneumonia.

Grim evidence of the rise in morbidity is evident at county morgues, too — because of a significant hepatitis A outbreak and because the homeless population is aging, several cities have seen a dramatic rise in the number of people who die homeless. (Reported in Mother Jones and in The New York Times)

Donald Trump and his selfish administration will be tainted by these statistics, because there was a moment in his White House tenure when he could have done something significant to improve our American quality of life, but he chose to pad the financials of the rich, instead. It was a preventable and negative benchmark.