The obesity crisis, the record 2.8 million working-age Britons too sick to do so and the rising prevalence of mental illness are sobering reminders that the UK population’s health is not good. But even for those familiar with this troubling situation, the Health Foundation’s analysis of the latest Office for National Statistics figures on healthy life expectancy sheds uncomfortable new light on the country’s poor and deteriorating health. The government is trying to rescue the NHS from an ever-rising demand for care, to grapple with public finances hamstrung in part by lost tax revenue from those unable to earn, and to pursue its key goal of economic growth. For Downing Street, the thinktank’s findings should be quietly terrifying. Healthy life expectancy captures how long people live in good health, free of illness or disability. As the Health Foundation says, it is a metric that gives a more comprehensive picture of the nation’s health than life expectancy, which only measures how long people live for.…