This study reported in the Atlantic shows that the US ranks last among rich nations with respect to health, the bottom of 17.
But a fresh report, out Wednesday, tapped vast stores of data to compare the health of affluent nations and delivered a worrisome new message: Americans' health is even worse than we thought, ranking below 16 other developed nations.
The country doing best is Japan. Second place is Switzerland; third is Australia.
More thoughts below the non-fattening cheetoh:
As the study says:
The results surprised even the researchers. To their alarm, they said, they found a "strikingly consistent and pervasive" pattern of poorer health at all stages of life, from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle and old age. Compared to people in other developed nations, Americans die far more often from injuries and homicides. We suffer more deaths from alcohol and other drugs, and endure some of the worst rates of heart disease, lung disease, obesity, and diabetes.
We're particularly bad for those under 50.
Among the most striking of the report's findings are that, among the countries studied, the U.S. has:
• The highest rate of death by violence, by a stunning margin
• The highest rate of death by car accident, also dramatically so
• The highest chance that a child will die before age 5
• The second-highest rate of death by coronary heart disease
• The second-highest rate of death by lung disease
• The highest teen pregnancy rate
• The highest rate of women dying due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth
(I think our pro life population need to be re-educated on what pro life means. Also, all the talk about stealing from future generations by racking up the debt - we're stealing from them now by screwing them with respect to education as well as health.)
If you make it to 75 in the US, you'll do OK. Certainly that may have something to do with Medicare but it may have something to do with the different habits that the older generation has.
Figuring out what to do is not that simple (except for seatbelts and gun control)
As individuals, the study found, "Americans are less likely to smoke and may drink less heavily than their counterparts in peer countries, but they consume the most calories per capita, abuse more prescription and illicit drugs, are less likely to fasten seatbelts, have more traffic accidents involving alcohol, and own more firearms." Yet even fit, nonsmoking Americans have higher disease rates than those elsewhere, the report said.
There are two things that may improve our position in the ranks:
First, the other countries positions may get worse. (I travel a lot, and although the Swiss are in pretty good shape, obesity is growing at an alarming rate in Australia.) Of course, it should not be comforting to think we're relatively better because other countries are worse.
Second, Obamacare is only starting to take effect:
Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said via a spokesperson that the existing Affordable Care Act "addresses many of these primary causes" of our health gap. New support for primary care, free cancer screenings, improved women's care, and other features of the law "will all help address these disadvantages," he said.
Certainly it's more evidence of the problem that so badly needed to be addressed.
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Tired of politics? Need to escape? Try my Greek mythology based novels, either the story of Oedipus from the point of view of Jocasta, or a trilogy about Niobe, whose children were murdered by the gods - or were they?