I heard about a study that women who own horses live longer. The comment below was "if you can afford a horse you can probably afford health insurance. It isn’t the horse "
Essentially yes but it’s not the underlying cause, as it wouldn’t also be true in places with free at the point of use healthcare.
The group “women who own horses” will, on average, be wealthier of course. However, it will contain an abnormally large group of people who can afford not to work.
Wealth is the biggest indicator of life expectancy. Adjusting for healthcare costs, the change happens when people earn enough passively to not work or significantly reduce their hours to a very small number.
Imo, the answer is “we’re all forced to work ourselves into early graves, unless you can afford to live off of other people working themselves into an early grave for you.”