Opinion

Health care should focus not on choices made but on choices available

The Oct. 6 editorial “How the U.S. can solve its life expectancy problem” concluded that “incentives influence behavior” is the overarching lesson from The Post’s insightful and alarming series on declining life expectancy in the United States.

But that’s not the lesson.

We often focus too much on the choices people make or don’t make and not enough on how much people’s health depends on the choices they have or don’t have.