There's no question as to why wealthy people tend to live longer — they obviously have more money for health care, a balanced diet, and gym memberships, they live in safer neighborhoods, and they are less likely to smoke cigarettes — but the nation's affluent have made such great gains in their life expectancy rates that the life expectancy gap between the haves and have nots continues to grow wider. All the best efforts of health professionals to eliminate health disparities among people of different incomes, races, and ethnicities have not yielded the results they'd hoped for.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”

“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

Even among people with insurance, there are still the obvious racial health disparities that we hear about all of the time.

• According to a very odd scientific study, straight hair gets more tangled than curly hair. I believe if I had participated in the trials the results would have skewed far in the other direction.

• A new book outlines all the reasons that contribute to the relatively low life expectancy of African Americans.

• Primary biliary cirrhosis, among other things, could be a contributing factor to the whole life expectancy thing.

• So that Beyonce Lemonade diet wasn't healthy? I never would have guessed.

• A piece of a meteorite that's sacred to an Oklahoma Native American tribe is being sold to the highest bidder. Shockingly, people are unhappy about that.

• Something else the church prevents in the black community: youth smoking.

• Why commit suicide when you're going to die sooner than everyone else, anyway!

• Unhealthy sleep patterns among African Americans may contribute to the well-documented health differences between blacks and other races.

• Doctors don't know who the hell is the most eligible for the HPV vaccine.

• "Vaginal rejuvenation" surgery is neither safe nor recommended, which is just shocking news to me.