The unfortunate truth is that if you break life expectancy out by ethnicity, it tells a different story. Generally Asians, Latinos, and Whites are above while Blacks and Native Americans are below and pull down the average: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9256789/#S12 If you break the groups out and individually compare against countries of similiar ethnicity, the US is often ahead.

For infant mortality specifically, in the US we count every baby with a sign of life, regardless of the age. In many developed countries, they simply don't count too premature (under 22 weeks or 500 grams, iirc) and therefore don't consider them in the metrics. It makes for an apples to oranges comparison.

You're right on "preventable and treatable deaths" with heart disease and diabetes being the biggest contributors. The question for that comes down to "is that a result of systemic issues or individual choices?" because we can do lots about one of those.

Um... really?

When I Googled life expectancy by ethnic group in the United States, it gave me the following numbers:

Asian: 85.2 years

Hispanic: 81.3 years

White: 78.4 years

Black: 74.0 years

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN): 70.1 years

Along with a source. (https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/racial-d...) (Note: Based on the source, these numbers are for 2023.)

Overall, life expectancy in the United States in the last few years is around 79ish per the sources listed here in this Wiki article: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...)

This means that the average life expectancy of white Americans is actually slightly below the average life expectancy of all Americans.

Incidentally, while a lot of developed countries do not track life expectancy by ethnicity, the UK seems to have a few some studies. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...) Though the data is very old (2011-2014), and the data is broken out by sex with no summaries, whites actually fare the worst. Black African females came out at the top, with a life expectancy of 88.9. I asked Google's search what the comparable black American female life expectancy was in 2011, and it gave me 78.2, along with a link. (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6244a8.htm)

Our overall ranking generally is below all "developed countries" that I can see, which range from Germany (~80) to the ~84 of "developed" countries like Japan, Switzerland, and Sweden (along with a few countries still classified as "developing" like Kuwait). It's not completely terrible, but considering how much the United States spends on health care, that's quite a poor value.

There are multiple identified factors for explaining life expectancy, but access to healthcare is identified as a very significant factor. In a system, like America, that is very expensive (likely due to highly inefficient, over-bureaucratic, overly complex, and over-quasi-monopolized systems) and without universal coverage, it follows that those who are poorer may not have the same access to healthcare and may succumb to entirely curable illnesses. So I don't think it's a coincidence that the racial breakdown above almost matches the median ethnic household income (the median white American household earns more than the median Hispanic household, but elsewise it aligns).

On infant mortality, at least one link I found -- https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/infant-... -- which adjusted data due to the reported difference, and still found significantly higher infant mortality in the United States. Though the data is a little old (2016).

> they simply don't count too premature (under 22 weeks or 500 grams, iirc) and therefore don't consider them in the metrics

Nope, that's not the reason.

> The U.S. infant mortality rate was still higher than for most Europeancountries when births at less than 22 weeks of gestation were excluded.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.pdf

Statistical hustling is common, but the most usual form is that the US excludes uninsured individuals to make itself look like it belongs in the developed country cluster.