Their version of “The Office” is better, too.
Snotty Americans who like to brag about how much healthier we are than the rest of the world might want to check out a new study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Or not, depending on how dear our fantasies are to us.
According to the study, white, middle-class Americans are substantially less healthy that the British in just about all areas, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, lung disease and high blood pressure. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Americans pay more than twice as much for medical care as the English, $5,274 a year in the U.S. compared to $2,164 in England.
When researchers divided subjects in the study by education and income levels, wealthy Americans with higher levels of education often had higher rates of illnesses such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease than English study subjects in the bottom economic and educational group.
“In some cases, the wealthiest Americans were sicker than England’s poorest,” said Julie Mitchell, an assistant professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin who practices at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital. “That’s crazy.”
Doctors suggest that England’s emphasis on primary care and its commitment to making sure everyone gets basic medical care may account for some of the disparity.
“You get to the problems earlier,” said Barbara Starfield, a distinguished professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. “They are much better with children, also.”
The rate of diabetes in England was 6.1 percent, versus 12.5 percent in the United States.
(via The Daily Press, Virginia)
2 opinions for Their version of “The Office” is better, too.
Jackie D
May 27, 2006 at 6:19 pm
If they’re talking strictly about the English, then it’s inaccurate to refer to “the British”. If they did a study of British health, they’d have to account for Scotland and Northern Ireland, both of whose citizens are notorious for, amongst other things, their shockingly poor health.
Also, the ‘basic care’ everyone here supposedly receives is…well, sub-par, to put it kindly. If the English are at all healthier than Americans, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that it’s because people here walk so much more, and eat less food. (What people eat here isn’t particularly more healthful than in the US, but we sure do eat a lot less of it. Adjusting to smaller portion sizes undoubtedly helped me lose weight when I moved here.)
Diabetes Notes » Their bacon is really just ham, though.
May 31, 2006 at 11:15 am
[...] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw it, too. The American Journal of Public Health is reporting that U.S. residents are 42 percent more likely to have diabetes than those smug Canadians. It’s like that study showing the English are healthier than us, too. Countries with socialized medicine have healthier citizens than us? Imagine that. [...]
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