Americans Are Seriously Sick

jd writes "A study by US and British researchers on frequency of illnesses shows that even when you compare like groups in the US and the UK, people in the US are considerably sicker than their counterparts in the UK. This is after factors such as age, race, income, education and gender were taken into consideration. The most startling conclusion was that although the richest Americans were better off than the poorest Americans, they did no better (health-wise) than the poorest of the English. Previous studies of the entire population had shown similar results, with America placing around 25th amongst industrialized countries on chronic disease prevention, but it had been assumed that minorities and economics were skewing the results. This study suggests that maybe that isn't the case."

Comments

Answer is easy.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Have a look at table 8 in this report on industrial relations.

Statutory minimum annual leave plus public holidays

UK: 28 days (four weeks + public holidays)
US: 10 days (0 weeks + public holidays)

US's work culture of long working days, unpaid overtime & too few holidays is killing you. Add to that the stress of the burden of health care falling on individuals and you have the sort of mess tfa talks about.

No doubt many other people are going to write in talking about "fat americans" being the problem - and its true that nutrition in America is a serious problem, but the comparison is to England, so not the cause of the differences.

Personally, I work on average 8 months a year and spend the rest of the time travelling - I am rarely stressed and almost never sick.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Xargle]

Um, obesity may be on the increase in the UK, but it's no way near at the levels in the UK. Having lived in both countries I can attest to the fact the bloater ratio is way higher in the US.

Re:Answer is easy.

[benbean]

Intelligent first post. Bravo sir.

I wholeheartedly agree. Having worked for 10 years in the US and now happily back in the UK, the lack of meaningful time off is stressful and damaging. And don't get me started on the unpaid overtime culture in the US that appears to be protected by statute - in IT anyway.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Propagandhi]

From TFA:

Even the U.S. obesity epidemic couldn't solve the mystery. The researchers crunched numbers to create a hypothetical statistical world in which the English had American lifestyle risk factors, including being as fat as Americans. In that model, Americans were still sicker.

I'm sure their methods were a little more rigorous than your heresay. I'd say that the GP is bang on, we're working ourselves to death.

Another interesting tidbit:

[...] the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet trails in rankings of life expectancy.

The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars.

Spending is only going to keep you alive for so long when you're overweight and out of shape from a poor diet and little exercise. That culture of 50 hour work weeks (or worse) just compounds these problems and shortens lives even more.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Barnoid]

I've never needed to miss a day off work yet, and I'm still vigorously healthy! But that's not because of any shirker reason like holidays, but because I eat correctly for the human body I have, which is to eat vegetarian.

Don't think what's right for you is right for everybody.

I know you'll shake your head at it like everybody does, but the typical vegetarian gets no cancer, never gets influenza (yes your flu last year could be avoided if you dumped meat) and will never have the depression, bowel disease, heart problems and overweight that inflict meat eaters!

My mom's cousin has been a vegetarian since childhood. She died two years ago of breast cancer.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Remember it's been shown by many studies that humans are vegetarian primates, so eating meat is just going against nature, you may as well be eating steel or plastic for all the good it will do to your body!

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I too am a vegetarian & that yes, overconsumption of meat is indeed one of the causes of the US's chronic health problems.

However, go and look in your mouth - see the canines there? The notion that humans are not well adapted to an omnivorous diet is a stupid one.

Also - saying "going against nature" (whether said by people like you or people arguing that eating meat is 'natural') makes no sense in this day & age - the life you lead is no more natural then the life of a bird in a cage.

Re:Answer is easy.

[CRCulver]

The problem isn't really meat, it's cooked meat. The Inuit peoples survived for thousands of years on a diet of pure raw meat, and experienced few health problems until the arrival of Western cooked food, which immediately brought illnesses upon them. Many studies have shown that a diet of raw meat is perfectly healthy and natural for the human body, so your assertion that vegetarianism is the only solution is silly.

In any event, I myself stick to the continental idea that what good is life without fine food? Meat may bring its problems--though continental rates of heart disease are lower than those in the U.K. and U.S.--but my life is more satisfying with such delicacies as foie gras or salonna that without.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Propagandhi]

I think anyone that's worked a job with time-and-a-half for overtime will tell you that those kind of overtime hours never come in the quantites of the ones you get from say.. EA or Ubisoft :)

Re:Answer is easy.

[mowph]

US's work culture of long working days, unpaid overtime & too few holidays is killing you.

Japan has the same minimum leave policy (10 days + stats), but on top of that, the leave policies are rarely enforced. It would normally be seen as selfish and inconsiderate of one's coworkers to actually use all of your leave, anyway. In many cases, company employees work completely unpaid "service overtime" out of obligation. Still, Japan is among the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world.

I'd say there must be more to the picture. Like any complex system, the health of a nation probably can't be pinned on one single factor.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

That info is useless. What's the average time off for a worker in the US vs. one in the UK?

Useless? I think minimum time off is certainly a factor. If you disagree, why not go & search for the information you're after and post it here?

Anyway, I can't find the exact statistics you're asking for, but this Wikipedia article on the working week says the USA has a working year of 1777 hours vs UK's 1652. That's more than a three week difference (on a 40 hour week - 3 1/2 weeks for the French).

Re:Answer is easy.

[nagora]

Still, Japan is among the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world.

Wanna talk suicide rates?

TWW

Re:Answer is easy.

[AvitarX]

This is just silly.

I would take 4 day meat left out than 4 day vegatables post consumtion. By your logic we shouldn't have any food because it gets disgusting.

4 day left out rice is very dangerous to eat, with rice usually the cause of food poisening that people get from Chinese.

I know some "healthy" vegatarians (who do the balanced diet thing) and they tend to look a little (I assumed they were vegatarians before I knew based on "healthy glow"). I do have to agree that they are less likley to be overweight, and the flew thing may be true too, but they also in general are sicklier and at least on parity in the depression department (sample of 5 or so, take with salt).

The real reason I am osting though is that I read a study that looked at people and found that heritage had a large part of what you were supposed to eat, with people from long established farming societies far more capable of living healthy on pure vegatables than people from coastal or nomadic societies. So eat what you were meant to could mean vegatables for you and meat for someone else.

Also, I would like to add that as a whole people probably shouldn't eat large courses of meat every day, but I know I tend to get hungry less often if I eat it a few times a week.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Xargle]

The article says the study accounts for the higher occurence of obesity in the US. However the comment :

"No doubt many other people are going to write in talking about "fat americans" being the problem - and its true that nutrition in America is a serious problem, but the comparison is to England, [bbc.co.uk] so not the cause of the differences." ...discounts that this is a factor and implies that England has equivalent obesity rates to the US, which is entirely wrong.

I'd suggest you read TFC, TFA and then comment.

Re:Answer is easy.

[SigILL]

my life is more satisfying with such delicacies as foie gras

Until you learn how they actually make that (warning: you may never eat foie gras again).

Re:Answer is easy.

[mo^]

I will hae to contradict you on this im afraid. I have yet to work in a job in the UK where discretionary or compassionate leave is not given. Similarly, people with kids often take extra days off for care.

Also, most official bodies and larger companies allow flexible working hours so you can be where you need to be when you need to be there.

Finally, my last 3 jobs have all allowed me to "buy and sell" holidays days.

sorry

Re:Answer is easy.

[CRCulver]

I daresay all people who enjoy foie gras know how it is made, it simply isn't a problem except for certain individuals like yourself.

Re:Answer is easy.

[ShieldW0lf]

Not to mention that there are trace elements essential to health that are only naturally available in sufficient concentrations in meat. This being why you need to take pill suppliments if you go vegan.

In the absense of those refined pills, a vegan diet will kill you in the long term. Clear evidence that a vegan diet is NOT natural.

Re:Answer is easy.

[permaculture]

Humans are omniverous, with teeth and gut suited for consumption of both meat and vegetation.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&r esnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=humans+are+omnivorous&spe ll=1

Humans are not herbivorous.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie =utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=define%3A+herbivore
Humans may choose to be vegetarian, and it can be a very healthy diet.

Never met an obese vegetarian? I have. Obesity is related to exercise as well as diet. It's the old 'energy taken in versus energy used up' equation.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Jugalator]

Suicide isn't an injury, it's a psychological state leading to quite irrational behavior, and stress from long work days can have psychological effects. Not commiting suicide is clearly one measure of health to me.

However, since differences in suicide rates are probably greatly overshadowed by other more common diseases and health standards, I don't think suicide have much to do with the discussion still. Both in Japan and USA is it a minority problem. Yes, Japan may have it be more common, but who knows why when countries with other stressful environments don't?

Re:Answer is easy.

[RedWizzard]

US's work culture of long working days, unpaid overtime & too few holidays is killing you.

But TFA implies a difference across the board, not just in among workers. If that is what the study shows then it's difficult to see the work culture as the primary cause.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Young Master Ploppy]

Walking. Seriously!

In British cities, we generally do a lot of walking compared to US cities. I once asked *in the visitor's centre* for directions to the public library in a US city. After getting a load of driving directions, when I told them I didn't have a car, the woman behind the counter looked horrified, and was stunned into disbelieving silence for several seconds, before giving the classic response :

"Well in that case, I don't think you can get there from here..."

Turns out it was only a ten-minute walk away. And virtually every car I passed on the way honked at me. Why? Because they thought I was a bum - after all, only bums don't have cars, right?

I'm not saying this is true of every US city - certainly people seem to walk in New York, for example - but by way of contrast, I live in London and I probably do about an hour of brisk walking every day just getting between tube stations, the office, and my home. That's not counting actual "exercise time", that's just getting about day-to-day. Even when I used to work in the northern cities like Leeds and Stockton-on-Tees, which don't have the Tube, I still did about an hour walking around at lunchtime.

I'm not trying to troll here, but I think this picture says a lot : Only In America.

Re:Answer is easy.

[namekuseijin]

"Japan is among the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world."

i guess a diet of fish and rice and ninja skills really pay off vs bacon and eggs and TV remote skills...

Re:Answer is easy.

[ooze]

Yep, in America the people exist for the economy. In Europe there is still more the view, that the economy should exist for the people (although it is dwindling). Actually in America everything exists for the economy. And when economy always has the highest priority, then people shouldn't wonder that everything else falls short. You know, such unimportant things like health, time for children, personal development, good food, a peaceful public climate, an ecosystem that can actually support life, a future ...

And I'm not saying this is exclusively American. I'm just saying, that in America this is more more dominant than anywhere else.

Re:Answer is easy.

[glas_gow]

Culturally, suicide in Japan doesn't have anywhere near the same taboo factor that it has in the west for a long, long time. In fact, in a lot of Japanese art and literature, suicide is idealised.

Re:Answer is easy.

[ishmaelflood]

...decent food, decent cheap wine, gorgeous scenery. Being poorish in France is not a bad thing to be.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Trogre]

A good post, but go have a look in a panda's mouth. Lots of sharp canines, but you won't see many of them eating meat.

One or two of them have gone ape and killed a sheep every now and then but generally they eat bamboo.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Haeleth]

the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation

Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?

Any economists care to explain what's going on here? Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be? Are those extortionate health costs translating into increased prosperity for America in some way?

Re:Answer is easy.

[Peter Mork]

The answer is indeed simple: among industrial nations one of the most significant predictors of health is the gap between rich and poor. The larger this gap, the worse the health of both groups. It is not surprising that poor people have worse health, but it is interesting that riches don't buy better health. More information is available here, and here's a related editorial from Newsweek.

In short, the study looked at the following health factors: life expectancy, infant mortality, death rates, disability, quality of life, self-assessed health, happiness and well-being. The high-level summary from the linked article: "Populations whose income is below a threshold (about $5,000 - $10,000 in US per capita income) generally have poorer health. Increasing income in such societies leads to better health. Above the threshold, national health is not necessarily related to absolute income, but rather to the gap between rich and poor. Studies in the past 15 years found that where income gaps are smaller, health appears to be better."

The researchers' hypothesis is that societies with a large gap between the rich and poor have a more hierarchical organization. Such an organization is based on coercion and resignation. More egalitarian societies do not engender the negative emotions needed to sustain a hierarchy.

Perhaps what is most surprising is that despite the maturity of this research, it seems (at least to me) that very few people are aware of it.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Lord Azrael]

you are right that there belongs more to the picture that Japan belongs to the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world although the average working time might is much higher than in most of the other industrial countries.

the other factor which comes in here which benefits the japanese is the way they eat or better, what they eat. A lot of fish, a lot of vegetables, green tea... To sum it up: they eat little fat and healthier stuff.

compare this to USA or UK, where fast food dominates what people eat, where coffee and coke often is the only stuff people drink the whole day.

other thing: the majority of my american coworkers here never go to doctors. they take pills and drugs the whole day. instead of changing their way of life, calming down, solving their personal problems, eating better stuff (!) they try to cure everything with drugs, drink coke the whole day, eat a kilo of steak every day and then complain that they suffer from heartburn and again take pills against heartburn ....

of course this is not representative, might be strange co-workers here. but on the other hand i noticed something the last time i was in new york when i watched TV ads: i have never travelled to a country where there are dozens of tv ads every hour for products to reduce heartburn - this confirms my observation. instead of eating different stuff people buy these drugs. this is obviosuly not the right solution. in the long run this affects your health.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Firethorn]

Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?

I blame it on the fact that we don't have a true free market, privatized health care system. I mean, when was the last time you paid more than a deductable for your health care? Did you have a choice of more than one company for health care, choosen by your employer?

Truly privatized would be your work place paying you money to obtain your own health care. Whether you bank it and pay straight cash after that(frequently gets a 50% discount), or buy a health care insurance program, or some combination of the two is up to you.

For that matter, it's been estimated that half the cost of healthcare in the USA is paperwork. You have the clinics fighting the insurance companies for money. This costs money. I've heard about some doctors getting frustrated, then refusing to take any healthcare plans, finding that they can offer their services for cash, and still cover expenses while charging less than many people's deductables.

I'll also note on the whole 10 days thing that I've never heard of a place that doesn't give you at least two weeks. And there's plenty of people who don't get 'bank holidays'. 24 hour manned jobs, most storefronts, etc...

Re:Answer is easy.

[geoffspear]

First of all, there's no free market, so the idea that the Invisible Hand is going to fix everything is ridiculous.

Secondly, the idea that a completely unregulated market is going to bring lower prices to the consume is a fairy tale. Without legislation to forbid collusion (which doesn't even work when it exists), businesses are just as likely to cooperate to get the best profit as they are to compete until they're all making razor thin margins and on the verge of starvation.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

go have a look in a panda's mouth. Lots of sharp canines, but you won't see many of them eating meat.

Just like us, Pandas are omnivorous (even if 99% of their diet is bamboo).

Re:Answer is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of studies I've read have tried to pin breast cancer entirely on milk consumption. {And if you've ever looked into the quality control process of milk, what they filter out of what you drink, it really is rather gross. But then again I don't think about what I'm eating when I'm eating :-) } But wait! People get lung cancer without smoking!

I study malignant melanoma in particular, and the whole business is rather nasty. What bothers me the most about it is how completely unnatural everyday life has become: the materials we're exposed to in our day to day lives, our living environments and conditions... but it wouldn't do us any good to go all primitive and animalistic again, either. I think the price we pay to try to keep everyone alive, even adapting for mutations in genetics and malformed tissue, ie. the entire practice of medicine, is a consequence. To me it's fascinating.

Why do some people get skin cancer and some don't? I really can't advise people to stay out of the sun completely. My suspicion is that certain people are more susceptible than others, and we're just too young technologically to accurately guess who.

I apologize for being all over the place - my point is this: you healthy people think this is all so simple because your personal philosophy works for you. I assure you, this is no easy question.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Ckwop]

Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?

Any economists care to explain what's going on here? Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be? Are those extortionate health costs translating into increased prosperity for America in some way?

Markets work very well where prices are elastic; that is, a change in price causes demand to change. Healthcare, by its very nature, is inelastic. The number of broken legs that need to be serviced each year is roughly the same and changing the price to fix a broken leg will not change the demand for the service appreciably. The same goes for Heart Disease, Cancer or just about any other ailment.

The upshot of this is that free market will raise the prices indefinitely, as we have seen in the United States. In fact, in America it's got a whole lot worse because companies are providing healthcare for their employees. The fact that companies have much bigger pockets makes the inflation problem so much worse.

There are also other economic disadvantages to the American set-up. The chief one being purchasing power. The NHS can buy ten million flu shots in a go and can pass these savings on the tax payer. In the mean while, a person doesn't have the same clout. Moreover, you generally need drugs when you're sick and you're going to be prepared sacrifice a lot more in order to get the drug than you would for most products. Not a lot else matter if you're dying of cancer: You either buy the drug or you die.

The best way to run a health service is through "market inspired" communism. That is not as much as an oxymoron as you might think it is. The NHS is a prime example of this.

Simon.

Re:Answer is easy.

[James_Duncan8181]

Bank holidays are not what you think. They are legal holidays. While it is true that you may have to work at a bank holiday, the employer is legally required to offer you a day off in lieu, so the point about the higher amount of days off stands.

Re:Answer is easy.

[SerpentMage]

Having gone through multiple health care systems from 100% private to 100% public, let me say that you will not get a cheaper rate from private health care because it is not in their interest.

1) To have a free market is to make money (not saying this is bad), but reality is that you can't make money with health care. Fixing a broken bone can be made profitable because it is a known science. Fixing a disease is not profitable and costs quite a bit of money. In your proposal where people "save" the money, ha! Diseases are a loss!

2) In a private system there still would be paperwork. Paperwork exists to create accountability! In a private system people will want accountability.

As much as I like free markets, health care and free market do not go together. Healthcare is a societal issue because health care from a profitability factor is a money looser. Healthcare is not like a car insurance. With a car you can try and avoid an accident, you can stop speeding. Accidents do happen, but there are ways to reduce them. Car accidents are human errors! Diseases on the other happen and there is nothing we can do to avoid them. They are a fact of life. You can diet, excercise, and lead a healthy lifestyle, but you can still be hit with cancer or some other disease! You can try to avoid them, but they will always hit you!

Re:Answer is easy.

[GreyPoopon]

You can diet, excercise, and lead a healthy lifestyle, but you can still be hit with cancer or some other disease!

And yet proper diet and exercise and vacations can dramatically reduce your chances of getting cancer or other diseases. I would say the car insurance analogy is better than you thought. :)

Re:Answer is easy.

[ShieldW0lf]

http://www.google.ca/search?q=vegan+diet+b12

The problem is Vitamin B12. It's not naturally occurring in plants, but exclusively synthesised by bacteria. The only natural bioavailable sources of B12 are meat products. That's why vegans are advised to eat foods enriched with B12 (and calcium). Chronic B12 deficiency leads to anaemia, nerve damage and eventually death.

Slamming back the odd Red Bull will take care of it though.

Re:Answer is easy.

[malsdavis]

I remeber reading in a newspaper about a survey here in the UK which found that the cities that suffered the most illness were also the ones where the highest proportion of people drove to places instead of walking or using public transport.

As I'm pretty sure any American city would top even the most car-centric British city, maybe there is a link bettween car use and illness.

Re:Answer is easy.

[SacredNaCl]

Truly privatized would be your work place paying you money to obtain your own health care. Whether you bank it and pay straight cash after that(frequently gets a 50% discount), or buy a health care insurance program, or some combination of the two is up to you.

Have you every tried paying cash in the US Health Care system? I had a dentist that I loved dearly, compared to some of the other dentists I've seen - this guy is the best in the field I've come across. My insurance used to pay him $650 for a root canal and crown. But he charged a cash customer $1500 for the same thing.

I have to pick up a couple medicines every month at the pharmacy. (Now I suppose Walmart & Costco are a few bucks cheaper, but not on my pharmacy plan) I pay a trivial deductable ($1 each on generics) for my medicines and a straight percentage for non-generics. They pay $65 for one of my scripts, but the cash price for it is $128 at Walgreens. They don't even hide that they are paying half what I would, I have hard caps on the policy and everything everyone is paid out is listed. Go try to find a pair of MRIs with & without contrast for $530 paying cash. I know why my GP isn't always happy to see me either, I know what he is paid for it.

Cash wont get you far in the American Health Care system, they rape cash customers blind. $50 for a hot towel, $75 for an ice pack... (*This is from my physical therapy bill before insurance, and these are the cash billing prices.)

I know there are some doctors you can negotiate with, and there is always the Doc-In-The-Box for routine things, but if you need anything more than the very routine, its a very expensive proposition. Some of the health care system is pure price gouging, but its targeted at the cash customer the worst.

I'm currently working as a contractor, and using COBRA for my old insurance policy. When its up, I'm going to buy this policy outright, its far from cheap, but I've done the math both ways. I can't win paying cash, and can't afford the risk of needing some specialized bit of care if I have any complications.

I'll tell you what I really think causes the difference between here and the UK. Although I haven't lived in the UK, I spent a year working in Germany. Its the food, its the stress, and its the climate of work. Half of the additives to the food you wont find in theirs - it makes a difference. The work environment was a lot better, shorter hours, less pressures for overtime (I was reminded of this several times when I suggested time tables that would be perfectly acceptable here - just work people 55 hours a week to do it.), very little stress coming out (there was virtually no crime where I was at). Even though I had the stress of dealing with a language I hadn't mastered, navigating a city I barely knew, and a bit of culture shock - I still came home with less need to unwind. Where I was at less traffic as well, of course it was expensive to drive. It was very typical on any job site I was at for them to offer us good coffee, and a few minutes to talk to everyone before starting. (That almost never happens here, just get led to the problem and dive in and avoid talking to anyone unless you have to, or they will think you are slacking off.)

Re:Answer is easy.

[fabs64]

Just thought I'd chip in by pointing out that we've all seen (and know without being told) that driving in any kind of traffic causes large amounts of stress, and generally stressed people are more ill than those that are laid-back.

Ever wonder why country people, especially farmers and people who do physical work, always seem healthier?

Re:Answer is easy.

[kfg]

It's funny, the other day I had the exact oppostie experience. Someone in a car stopped me to ask directions to a place just a few blocks away. I gave them said directions and then had to stop and retract:

"Wait, those are walking directions. You've gotten yourself into a maze of one way streets. In a car I don't how you get there from here."

After a few seconds of thought I was able to send them in a big, mile long circle to get back to a spot I could have jogged to in about 30 seconds.

Reminds me of the time I was standing on Boylston Street in Boston and could see Mass Ave from where I was, but it took me over 20 minutes to drive there.

I'm not saying this is true of every US city - certainly people seem to walk in New York, for example

Been down to "The City" recently as it happens. I was telling a friend about my trip, starting at The Daily Show studio on W 52nd, down to CBs in the East Village, back to The Daily Show studio, down to Baggot Inn in the West Village, back to The Daily Show. About 15 miles in all. She started talking about the trials and tribulations of the NYC subway system.

"No, no," I said. "I walk."

"Ooooooh!" she replied. "You act like a native." (And technically I am)

Anyway, I'd posit that America's health problems are related to this, but not directly. In America you will find people who drive to the mall, take the elevator to the second floor gym; and then spend half an hour on a Stairmaster thingy.

This is really fucking bizarre behavior.

Americans, on the whole, even the obese Ding Dong eaters, are neurotically obsessed with health. This leads to behavior such as that noted above, and others such as the psychological reduction of food to some sort of medicine. "Take your six almonds a day to fight cancer."

But the one thing they absolutely will not do is simply live in a natural, healthy manner, and the combo of this with a health obsession makes them sick. It kills a lot of them.

Call it the Howard Huges Syndrome.

KFG

Re:Answer is easy.

[Oligonicella]

"(one not poisoned by eating meat)"

Gee, an agenda? Provide links proving eating meat poisons the bowels, chum. Me, I think you're lying.

Re:Answer is easy.

[congaflum]

Interestingly, B12 *used* to be available in plant-based foods. While it's never synthesized by plants, as you say, it's commonly thought that the abundance of bacteria in the soil meant that, in the past, people who ate only plant foods would still end up with a sufficient intake of B12 from that.

Over the years, the pesticides and such that we use in farming have stripped the soils of these bacteria (among other things), which is why B12 supplements of some form have become pretty much a necessity for anybody (like myself) who tries to avoid all animal products.

Re:Answer is easy.

[maxume]

Diseases that occur in a statistically reliable fashion can be insured, but you have to have a huge population to do it. A large problem with american health coverage is that it isn't insurance. Dental care, new contact lenses, fashionable glasses, none of these things are insurable, but we want our 'insurance' to cover them.

As far as free markets go, the reason a free market doesn't exist is not because some things aren't profitable to treat(a free market wouldn't treat them), but because the decisions regarding spending are not made locally. So yeah, it probably isn't real desireable to have health care be a free market, that market would let people die all the time.

Tim Hartford makes some interesting guesses about the difference in effectiveness between british and american health care in The Undercover Economist:

http://www.timharford.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195189779/103-53 21114-3043046?v=glance&n=283155

Re:Answer is easy.

[FuzzyDaddy]

In a truly free market, people without the money to pay for good health care would die.

This is one of the fundamental problems with the free market model for health care. Remember Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", when tiny Tim was going to die because they couldn't afford a doctor? That's true free market health care.

The question is whether human life is intrinsicaly valuable, and our economic systems are there to best support and enrich life, or whether the economic system is the most valuable, and human life is something that needs to be fit into it.

It's not a trivial question. There have been many societies throughout history where human lives where less valuable than the material needs of others. (Again, see Dickens, American slavery, the roman empire, etc.). It's an actual choice. And most Americans would come down on the side of the value of human life.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Saven Marek]

This is not "activist" pictures, it is documentary images I have seen on national TV.

I propose an addendum to godwin's law. If someone mentions "It's true, I saw it on national TV" then they lose and the debate is over. Oh and everyone gets to laugh at them for weeks.

Re:Answer is easy.

[SerpentMage]

No.... I am right here...

Let's take cancer. People don't know where cancer comes from and think that some habits are better than others. Yet we all can get cancer, regardless if you excercise, etc. We think that certain habits will increase the liklihood, but we cannot say, "Excercise and you will not get cancer".

Let me give you an example; Lance Armstrong, incredibly healthy and a great athlete, yet he was on the brink of death due to cancer. Or how about Andres Galarraga? Or how about Scott Hamilton? How about Mario Lemieux?

This is why I say healthcare is a societal issue because healthcare saps money and is a money looser! With a spin on the car insurance ananlogy. When a driver has an accident we as a society don't mind charging that driver more or not giving him car insurance. If a person gets cancer can we say, "No you can't get coverage, you are on your own?" This is exactly what private healthcare providers do. I know, my mother survived breast cancer, but the private healthcare providers are refusing to cover her for cancer. If she gets cancer again she is on her own. This is wrong! But it is business because she is a "problematic" person.

Re:Answer is easy.

[twiddlingbits]

Americans can travel to Canada, Mexico and the Carribean on our short vacations and many do. The reason we don't travel the rest of the world is two-fold. One is time, and the other is there are so many wonders to see in the USA and so many things to do why go to Europe? We have the World's Best National Parks, great skiing in several places, excellent beaches on two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, at least three Mountain ranges, cheap (relatively) gas prices, Hollywood, NYC, Boston, etc. as places to go. Many nations in Europe dont have this and they have to visit other countries. Howeever to them that is about as big a deal as someone in the USA visiting another state, and just about as close, and probably less hassles if you take the trains!

Re:Answer is easy.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

You're quite right, there's loads of cool things to see & do in the US.

However - the main reason people in other parts of the world travel is to go and experience a different culture - that's something you're not really going to get in your own country.

The main reason Americans don't travel is because they know virtually nothing about the world outside of the US & everyone fears the unkown.

(Oh, and honestly, drop the "World's Best National Parks" in favour of "some of the most fantastic National Parks in the world").

Re:Answer is easy.

[blakestah]

Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?

Any economists care to explain what's going on here? Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be? Are those extortionate health costs translating into increased prosperity for America in some way?


Its an easy answer, a very easy answer.

Westernized countries with socialized medicine have better across-the-board health than the USA, and spend 8-9% of their GDP on health care. In the USA, we spend 15% of the GDP on healthcare, and fully 1 out of 6 people have no health insurance.

Our health system fails miserably compared to socialized medicine in terms of cost (even when normalized by GDP), and most measures of how healthy you are. The common straw man is that the [Canadian][UK][French] system won't work, but there are a dozen different socialized medicine models out there, and some of them look quite good at all levels compared to the USA.

You'd have a hard time making an argument that health care in the USA is better than Cuba, if you used normal markers of health, like life expectancy, infant mortality, sick days, etc.

Re:Answer is easy.

[ray-auch]

you can use it for cases where a member of the family is sick. In the UK you cannot.

Umm, if you can't you should discuss your rights with your employer - in the UK there is a legal _right_ to unpaid leave to care for dependents.

Re:Answer is easy.

[TheSolomon]

The cars honked at you because they thought you were a bum? Don't you think that's a bit of a stretch? In truth, they honked at you either because they wanted to startle you (because many people are assholes), or because you were walking down a road without adequate pedestrian space, placing yourself and the drivers at risk.

Sometimes you have no choice, there's only one place to walk and it's on a busy road without a sidewalk. There are lots of times, however, when I see people walking down a dangerous road only inches from traffic, when a perfectly good sidewalk (or quiet access road) is only ten or twenty feet to the right. That sort of thing frustrates me to the point I might consider honking, since if that person had taken a moment to look around their environment, they would have found a perfectly suitable place to walk.

Pedestrians (and bicyclists) need to educate themselves about the environment in which they want to travel. For example, at first glance it may look like I need to ride my bike along a rather busy road to get from my apartment to downtown. But if I take a second to research my route, it turns out there is a wonderful paved bike trail that snakes along the river the entire way, saving me time without risking my life.

Like I said, sometimes you have no choice. But I think everyone (pedestrians and motorists alike) are better off researching their routes ahead of time.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Aqua_boy17]

A most excellent point. IMHO, Americans in general are isolated in their thinking and attititudes nearly to an extreme. You just don't see this in other countries like you do in the US. I have in-laws in Colombia who are vrey much better informed about current world events than almost anyone that I know here in the States.

I've also travelled quite a bit through Europe with tour groups and I have always noticed that while people from other countries embraced the cultural differences and wanted to sample new foods, the Americans generally couldn't wait to go trotting off to the McDonalds or KFC. Some of my richest experiences while travelling were during times when we sampled the local cuisine and got to know a little more about the culture around us. Most Americans really don't care about this much.

Add these proclivities to the fact that we do not generally receive nearly as many paid holidays as the rest of the Western world and it's no surprise that we on this side of the pond 'just don't get out much'. You could also make a strong argument that this phenomenon leads to our tolerence and even support of some disastrous foreign policy in recent years (and I'm not just talking about the current administration).

Re:Answer is easy.

[Dausha]

"Turns out it was only a ten-minute walk away. And virtually every car I passed on the way honked at me. Why? Because they thought I was a bum - after all, only bums don't have cars, right?"

No, they weren't honking at you because they thought you were a bum. They honked because they did not recognize you. Because they did not recognize you, they knew you were a _foreign_ visitor. So, they were trying to help you feel more welcome. I would not be surprised if some of them gave you the national one-finger salute as well.

Re:Answer is easy.

[SenorChuck]

I definitely have to agree with you on this one. I've lived in Iowa my whole life, and when I get out my bicycle to go for a ride or just walk around town, people stare at me in total horror - as if they've never seen someone move without a car.

I think the answer to this problem lies somewhere in a) reducing the amount of stress we put on ourselves and moreso on each other, and b) taking the initiative to do something that has lifelong benefits, e.g. at least 15 minutes of walking per day.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to agree with the last part of your comment. I lived in Germany for almost 6 years before coming to the US in 2003. Shortly after our arrival here, my wife and I noticed that we were getting bloated and constipated constantly, and my oldest son started showing behavioral swings and constant mood changes. We were eating basically the "same things" we used to eat in Germany, only in their american equivalents or similar products, or so we thought. I used to work for Microsoft in Germany and even though you could expect that environment to be full of pressure and stress, it wasn't. Here in the US, I did some consulting for a local company and even I as a consultant felt that I was expected to stay long hours and put in the ocassional saturday in. The president of the company where I did the consulting told me he had not had a vacation in over 8 years or so. In Germany, if you know how to combine your vacation time with regular holidays, you can really have some time to yourself and use it as you please.

Other things we have noticed is how little people move their bodies here in the US. In Germany people use their bikes to go everywhere. Here, we have neighbors who get in their cars to drive to the store across the street, literally. Yet, we hear them complain about how they don't understand where their extra body weight comes from. And let's not even talk about their refrigerators and pantries. Stuff worthy of being used to mummify human bodies.

I think it all adds up. Feed your body the wrong fuels, and it is forced to make up for it somehow. That in turn deteriorates your ability to cope with stress and disease. If you then replace proper hidration with diet sodas and sugary juices, you submit the body to further stress. Add long work weeks to this and little time off to enjoy life, and you have a deal breaker

Even though I like it here, I really can't wait for my wife to finish her Ph.D. so we can head back to Europe. I think I either read somewhere or heard someplace that "People in the US are taught that the american dream is worth dying for. The new European dream, with its take on social issues and general well-being is worth living for"

Re:Answer is easy.

[shaitand]

We don't have a free market but not for the reasons you say (or not only, you may have a point even if it a clear republican spin).

The reason we don't have a free market anymore is become a small number of corporations have grown to dominate each area of the market. This includes all segments of healthcare. These entities used to compete, now they collaborate in many areas and compete in others. They do this to maximize profits. This occurs in healthcare, artificially inflating prices at every step of the game. Overflated prices are charged for drugs because all of the drug companies have agreed it is in their best interests to inflate prices. Medical supplies and equipment fall in the same category. Healthcare is a vital resource; ALL the major supply companies feel that way and therefore they charge what they can extort (it is either pay them or die after all). Charges for education and medical school are again extraordinarily overflated because the students have a high earning potential. Again all the schools agree this should be the case and therefore don't compete in an area that could affect profits. Doctors and hospitals are then left with the burden of all these inflations and expenses, even a portion of the drug inflation. Do they eat them and let them reduce their 300k+ annual salaries? Of course not, they pass them directly to the consumer, so that no matter what you pay, they still get their 300k+! Doctors are not blameless in all this, like some would make out. A union composed of individuals in the top 10% income bracket because they aren't making enough money is a ridiculous concept. Except in OUR free market. In our free market, doctors uniting and price fixing because competition between them was starting to reduce prices is a pretty typical move. As I mentioned before, it happened with all the other industries, why not the docs too?

The only ones with an interest in reducing these expences are the insurance companies and the consumer. Insurance companies actually reduce the costs for the consumer because even doctors who move to cash schemes have to compete with their deductibles. Of course the insurance companies have their own union, in it they decide that they will univerally not accept pre-existing conditions or pay for experimental drugs and so forth. Insurance companies hardly have the consumers interests in mind either, the competition is merely a side effect of their existance.

Insurance (aside from self insurance), as a rule is a form of gambling. Paying an insurance company for anything is tossing your money away. You might get lucky and win a hand but you are playing the house and the odds are in their favor. That is why you have a point. You also have a point because these insurance companies are catering their terms to appeal to employers instead of to the people who are actually going to be getting the insurance.

Re:Answer is easy.

[graikor]

If I had mod points, you'd get an "Insightful".

I can practically feel my blood pressure go up every time I have to drive near rush hour, since every other driver on the road is either an idiot or a maniac*. If I could ride a bicycle or use public transportation, I would consider it, but in Texas, it just ain't possible. I think the stress-relieving nature of the actual physical work also contributes to the lower stress levels - they go hand-in-hand.

*: Idiot (n): Person driving slower than the speaker. Maniac (n): Person driving faster than the speaker.

Re:Answer is easy.

[bitingduck]

I've heard about some doctors getting frustrated, then refusing to take any healthcare plans, finding that they can offer their services for cash, and still cover expenses while charging less than many people's deductables.

I know a guy who has an ambulance company that only works special events (movies, sporting events, anybody who wants an ambulance on standby) because he doesn't want to have to deal with insurance companies. He has about 4 ambulances and a bunch of EMTs and charges standard rates for being on standby and has a pretty good price for transportation to the hospital if someone does end up needing a ride.

Re:Answer is easy.

[smellsofbikes]

I've had a different experience from you. The most recent example was my girlfriend's problems with endometriosis: we went to a very high-end fertility clinic because they were said to be good at such things and when it came time to pay, they said it'd be about $700 and asked for our insurance, and when we said we had none the woman said, sotto voice, "oh, well, how about $400?" and looked around to make sure nobody else in the waiting room had heard her.

Likewise, one of my best friends has a father who is a doctor and he figured out what sort of insurance claims had the highest repayments (profitability) so he went out of his way to find patients suffering from related problems so he could turn in what were, basically, inflated claims. (He got in a LOT of trouble for it, too.) But he, also, was charging what the market would bear -- more from insurance companies than from individuals.

Obviously, your experience is different, but I think there's a lot of variety, depending on the doctor and the situation.

Re:Answer is easy.

[kfg]

Q.E.D.

KFG

Re:Answer is easy.

[jackbird]

Mmmmm.... I love the smell of developers in the morning....

Yeah, it's in the late afternoon that it becomes unbearable...

Re:Answer is easy.

[kponto]

Have you every tried paying cash in the US Health Care system? I had a dentist that I loved dearly, compared to some of the other dentists I've seen - this guy is the best in the field I've come across. My insurance used to pay him $650 for a root canal and crown. But he charged a cash customer $1500 for the same thing.

It's not the doctors fault, he's not out to rape cash customers, he's trying to make ends meet. The reason that uninsured medical costs are so high is partially the fault of private insurance companies. Your doc could charge $800 for a root and crown, cover his expenses (lets say $650), and have some money left over to take home ($150). If he got $800 bucks every time, it would work. Unfortunately, the private insurance companies use their muscle to reduce the amount that they will pay, so the doc is forced to accept this lower payment ($650). Well that covers his expenses, but it certainly won't leave him with a paycheck, so he has to charge the uninsured a bit more to make up for it.

However, MedicAid and MediCare are the real reason why healthcare is out of control in this country. Docs are required by law to accept both, and neither of them pay anywhere near enough to cover expenses. While the insurance companies will haggle down the price to $650 with your dentist, MedicAid and MediCare give him $200, take it or leave it. The fact that the doc has to accept these programs leaves him screwed. He loses money on every procedure, and has to hike rates to make up for it.

Re:Answer is easy.

[MoneyT]

Except it isn't just the wealthy that are paying. My effective tax rate when I was making just above the poverty line for each paycheck after state and federal taxes was about 21%. Nearly 12% of that was paid into social security and medicare/medicaid. In ortherwords HALF of the money I was paying out in taxes was going into systems that I am ineligable to bennefit from. In the mean time, I had to scrape together $125 to get a simple checkup at a doctor (which would have been covered easily if I wasn't paying for someone elses health.

Furthermore, here's another figure to add to your collection. Nearly 50% of the taxes in the US are paid by the top 10% of the wage earners. The bottom 20% of the wage earners not only don't pay taxes but actualy MAKE money off the tax system. In otherwords, pick the nearest 10 people to you. One of them pays 50% of the taxes you all pay, 2 of them recieve money rather than loose it, and the last 7 divide the other 50% between you.

Re:Answer is easy.

[operagost]

Er... pasteurization and refrigeration? I hear they work wonders.

Re:Answer is easy.

[Coryoth]

People from New Zealand and Australia have much further to travel than people from the US, particularly if they want to see Europe. Yet oddly enough you'll find Aussies and Kiwis in surprisingly high numbers travelling all over the place. Often the travel is done when they have just finished high school or university while still poor, so obviously money isn't the obstacle. The real answer, a far as I can tell, is that it is a significant cultural difference: in general US people are far more insular, nationalistic, and (willfully) ignorant of the world, and as such they are far less interested in seeing any of it.

Jedidiah.

Pies

[Loquis]

So who ate all the pies?

Duuuuuuuuh

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialism == Medical

US != Socialism

HENCE

Medical != US

Sheesh.. when we'll we learn?

Re:Duuuuuuuuh

[Freaky Spook]

Sheesh.. when we'll we learn?

When a guy who's sick of the flue hijacks a plane and flies it into a building.

We may be sick

[RLiegh]

But at least we're not revolting!

Universal Healthcare?

[ndogg]

A friend of mine who is typically an ardent democrat told a Democratic Party representative (who was asking her for money) told the representative that she'll give the Party money as soon as they get her universal healthcare.

Perhaps she's being a little unreasonable, but then again, if the Democratic Party continues to be ineffective, and impotent, perhaps we should be looking towards a party that does have the courage to stand up to the Republicans and actually get things like universal healthcare into the running for issues.

Re:Universal Healthcare?

[CRCulver]

Rick Mayes' Universal Coverage is a good book to pick up if you are curious on why the U.S. is among the only first-world countries with no universal healthcare. It should be available in any good university library. Unfortunately, the book is quite a downer, and sees little solution to the bureaucratic mire that Medicare and Social Security have created. After reading this book, you'll have a strong desire to emigrate.

Had President Clinton not appointed his wife over the issue just over a decade ago, we might have made some progress. Hillary has her talents, but she was so controversial that the entire matter of national healthcare became taboo for years afterward.

Re:Universal Healthcare?

[Propagandhi]

According to TFA coverage isn't the issue here. The purpose of the study was to compare health across the board, not just of the working class or poor (who would benefit from a universal healthcare system) and it found that regardless of income Americans were less healthy than UKers. Which is bizarre, considering we (the US) are still the richest country in the world, and should therefore have the best top tier healthcare.. or at least one would think.

At any rate, as cool as universal healthcare would be, TFA really isn't bringing that issue up. Rather, I think it alludes to the hire levels of stress or maybe more generally the unhealthy ways we Americans live. Universal Healthcare can't make you sleep 8 hours every night or eat all your vegetables, and I think that's really the point that should be driven home by the article... as Americans, we just aren't living healthily (and no amount of healthcare can make up for that.)

Re:This is a trash study

[Bromskloss]

However, I'd like to see some links backing up your assertion that you have to wait years for life-threatening procedures.

That, my friend, is a _feature_, not a bug.

"Americans Are Seriously Sick"

[ben0207]

Whereas Canadians are "x-treme", and the French are "to the max"

Assumed by whom?

[famebait]

America placing around 25th amongst industrialized countries on chronic disease prevention, but it had been assumed that minorities and economics were skewing the results.

I really don't believe that was assumed by most public health experts, and certianly not ones outside the US. The US does not just have greater socioeconmic differences, but since thay have no proper pubic heathcare, those differences matter a lot more. And even if you belong to the group that can afford proper care, you still have to go get it; there is little follow-up by default. It would really be quite shocking if the US system resulted in high a level of public health as the more proactive systems found in western Europe. Now, I know that there are varying opinions on what are the responsibilities of society and of the individual, and I'm not going to go into that. But of there are effects. I assume that most of those against public healthcare accept those consquences as a fair price (for someone else) to pay, but if this result came as an unwelcome suprise, I would call that a tad naïve.

Re:Assumed by whom?

[Duds]

Indeed, because of course there's no ethnic minorities in the UK at all.

Re:This is a trash study

[pryonic]

But the fact is that the NHS provides free treatment to ALL UK citizens, not just those who can afford it. In America you can be seen quickly as long as you're willing to pay. Fine if you can afford it or if your employer gives you health insurance, but if not you're screwed.

I believe health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich, and I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.

I'm guessing you're one of the lucky ones with private health insurance. Try living on the povery line and making a choice between getting that lump looked at or eating for a month. I know what most people are forced to choose in your so called land of the free...

Call me a pessimist...

[jgdobak]

...but, working in the healthcare profession in the US, no one gets paid unless you're sick. Sadly, healthcare here is definitely for-profit. So of course we're all 'sick.'

(Not a supporter of socialist programs in general, but healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed.)

Re:Call me a pessimist...

[5cary]

but healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed.

...or the Government.

Re:Call me a pessimist...

[Detritus]

I saw an interesting documentary that described how hospitals couldn't afford to offer a comprehensive preventative care program for diabetics. They made plenty of money caring for the complications of diabetes, but preventative care was a big money loser. What a perverse system we have.

Re:Call me a pessimist...

[sljck]

I took my son to the doctor on Monday for his nine month checkup, and informed the secretary that I would be paying for the visit because I am changing employers and between insurance plans. The doctor works at and for the hospital, and the hospital dictates many of his policies. When the doctor came in, he asked if I had any concerns or had noticed any problems. I said no. The doctor (who is a very good man) said, "let me ask that another way: my secretary told me you are uninsured, and a well-person visit will cost you about twice as much as a sick-person visit. Have you noticed any coughing our anything?"

The healthcare system is designed to make profits, not to keep people healthy.

I am incredibly healthy

[Oldsmobile]

Well, I am sure it has something to do with diets. You see, I haven't been sick for years (except once for a day or two in China). I stopped smoking, I eat a varied healthy diet and I exercise. But I'm not a health freak. I drink, I eat hamburgers etc. every now and then and I don't exercise THAT much.

However, my brother smokes, eats lots of junkfood and never exercises more than going for a walk. He gets a flu or some other bug maybe five or more times a year!

A simple change in lifestyle will make you much healthier.

Michael Moore's new movie about health care

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael Moore is going to expose the rotten health care system in the USA in his new movie called Sicko:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.ph p?id=193

The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.

Re:Michael Moore's new movie about health care

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned that Michael Moore is probably not the best person to make a movie about proper diet and nutrition.

Re:This is a trash study

[Cougem]

You don't wait years when you're ill. That's retarded, so don't spout bullshit. Oh and by the way pasting in a daily mail headline of one poor person who had to isn't evidence, that's using an exceptation as an example. Americans get fucked over by their insurance just as often, if not more. The waiting lists are usually for things like knee replacements, which are my no means life threatening.

environmental factors ?

[jimbob1859]

Living in the Chicagoland area where air quality is more a mocking term than something to brag about, I seem to remember during my stints in europe several years ago that everybody seemed to be a lot more concerned with things like air quality, environmental impact. I remember there being a law severely restricting output of several chemicals in germany as early as ten years ago whereas some of those are still being thrown in the air happily every day around here. that's just one of several items where laws and regulations are a lot tougher in europe when it comes to the environment and keeping it healthy.

Fast food

[PenisLands]

Maybe it's because of the fast food? I live in England and I eat pretty much entirely home cooked and prepared meals, except maybe apart from the odd sandwich from Sainsbury's.
I recently went out to stay at a friends house for a weekend, and on the first day we ate McDonalds in the evening. The next day I was feeling pretty sick. All I ate about two burgers and some chicken nuggets.

Re:Fast food

[famebait]

I don't buy that. The diet of low-income Britain is generally terrible. Chips with everything, with the "everything" part often being deep-fried too. And that combination being characterised as "proper food". Crisps and a chocolate bar considered an adequate meal for a kid. Last I was there, business at McDonalds seemed quite brisk in the UK as well.

Re:Fast food

[mattyrobinson69]

To be fair, there are plenty of english meals that dont have chips. eg:

fish and mushy peas (thats not that bad)
mushy pea butties (that cant be that bad)
meat pie butty (thats a bad one)

there are plenty more, but bacon, eggs and black pudding doesn't really highlight my point.

Re:Fast food

[PhoenixFlare]

I recently went out to stay at a friends house for a weekend, and on the first day we ate McDonalds in the evening. The next day I was feeling pretty sick. All I ate about two burgers and some chicken nuggets.

Assuming it was the food, I think maybe it wasn't so much that it was specifically McDonalds, it's that it was probably extremely high-fat compared to your normal diet. I know that I, for one, can get some pretty uncomfortable stomach issues if I suddenly knock back a big fast food meal, half a pizza, any very high-fat food, etc. after eating my usual home-cooked, partly organic diet for a while.

I'd never claim that McDonalds is health food, but all the people that live on healthy, low-fat diets that yell "OMG poison!" when they try a super high-fat burger out of the blue and make their stomachs feel like crap just annoy the hell out of me.

free as in beer

[lovebyte]

Let me quote this from the BBC article:
Rates of smoking are similar in the US and England but alcohol consumption is higher in the UK.
There you have it, folks, DRINK!

(I am only half joking)

Re:free as in beer

[l3v1]

Well, joke or not (mostly not), reasonable amounts of beer and wine can do good to most people's (i.e. who don't yet have some diseases like to liver, kidneys, blood pressure, etc.) helath. And yes, here in Europe we really have some really _fine_ beers and wines, thankfully.

Re:free as in beer

[AVryhof]

As a matter of fact, yes. Drink!

Being a home brewer, I have learned that it is very hard for any kind of disease-causing bacteria to survuve in beer. Moreover, drinking is a depressant, which often causes you to relax and "let loose" (unless you are trying to "drown your pain"). On top of that, wine is supposed to help with keeping arteries clean, and beer (as pointed out a few months back on /.) drinkers are less likely to get cancer.

So one can only conclude that moderate drinking is good for your health... Drink up!

BTW: slashdot captcha words are often disturbing.

Re:free as in beer

[PCM2]

And yes, here in Europe we really have some really _fine_ beers and wines, thankfully.

Tut tut! Same in the U.S., though admittedly the distribution of fine beers and wines is not spread evenly throughout the country. The reason you never hear about it is the same as the reason why we Americans aren't familiar with European beers and wines: They're seldom exported (with the exception of high-end wines). The Heineken you buy in the U.S., for example, is not the same formula as that sold in Holland. Until very recently at least, the Guinness wasn't the same either. But then again, most Europeans are going to think that all American beer is Bud and Miller because they've never seen beers from Anchor Brewing, Sierra Nevada, Anderson Valley, Speakeasy, Full Sail, etc. And surely you've heard of the California wine industry?

Re: TypoMan strikes!

[Grab]

Normally I'm not a spelling Nazi, but "pubic healthcare" is too good to pass up... ;-)

Grab.

PS. Having said that, you've written "naive" with a diacritic, which I'd never bother with, so bonus points there.

Re:This is a trash study

[bitkari]

Sure, the US does expend much more money on healthcare than the UK, but if this study suggests that people in the UK are still healthier, what does that say of the US healthcare system?

Perhaps the NHS with it's endless 'performance targets', NICE reviews, and Local Trust bureaucracies is actually doing a better job of making people better than the largely private US system, with it's deeper pockets, and strong-arm tactician pharmaceutical companies?

Per Capita Healthcare Spending

[LeastWorst]

From tfa:
"The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars."
So you lot are spending twice as much to get worse results? Great system guys. It's shameful that in the the richest country in the world people are suffering and dying because they can't afford to see a doctor.

Re:Per Capita Healthcare Spending

[jgdobak]

That's because it's a game of semantics.

The point here in the US (with our wonderful for-profit system) is not to make people well. That went out the window years ago.

The point is to find a way to rule regular conditions (like an allergy to pollen during the springtime) as a sickness, and find a way to rake in a few dollars from it as a result.

I maintain that Americans are not actually more sick than residents of other countries, but that routine conditions that are regular and normal (colds in the winter, allergies in the spring, headaches, etc) are paperworked into being 'sick' and treated medically, because there is more profit in doing so.

Nationality

[Anonymous Coward]

The official nationality of people from the UK is British, not English. By referring to Brits as "English", you're pissing off a sizable number of people who are proud to be Scottish, Irish, Welsh, etc. Us English did some pretty nasty things to them in the past, so calling them "English" isn't exactly going to ingratiate yourself with them.

By referring to people from the UK as British, you're still going to piss off some Irish, but at least you're correct in your terminology. Yes, British is the correct term to use for somebody from the UK, even if they aren't from Great Britain. References:

• alt.usage.english
• CIA World Factbook
• Wikipedia

Having read the article, I have no clue exactly which region of the world it is talking about, because it seems to use different regions as synonyms. It could be the UK, which is a country and member nation of the UN. It could be Great Britain, which is a geographical region within the UK comprised mainly of England, Wales and Scotland. Or it could be England, which is a region, home nation and constituent country of the UK, but which doesn't have its own government.

If I had to guess, I'd say that they were talking about the UK, even though they don't use the word "UK" at all, instead opting for "British" and "England". I base this guess on years of experience with peopel from the USA getting it wrong and the sentence "Those dismal results are despite the fact that U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens." Hint: England spends nothing whatsoever on its citizens. The NHS in England is run by the UK government. It's the NHS in other parts of the UK that belong to their respective constituent countries - England actually has very little to call its own these days.

England, Great Britain and the UK are three completely different things. Mix them up, and you piss people off. It's a bit like mixing up California with the USA with North America. You'd think somebody was pretty ignorant to do that, right?

Re:Nationality

[WIAKywbfatw]

The notion of Commonwealth seems to be abused too.

I remember being rather shocked a year or so back when a writer that is a favourite of mine on ESPN.com described the Commonwealth Games as basically being a European-only Olympics.

Well, that's utter rubbish, of course. Countries as geographically diverse as Canada, Australia, India and South Africa (and many, many more) are all in the Commonwealth. European nations outside of the UK, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are not.

Commonwealth has nothing to do with Europe but, to some people at least, the two seem to be interchangeable, which is very worrying.

For anyone that's interested, the Commonwealth is made up of those nation states, territories and dependencies that were formally part of the British Empire that want to be in it, which is pretty much all former parts of the Empire bar a few exceptions, such as the USA and the Republic of Ireland.

By the way, I'm from London and when asked for my nationality I opt for whatever's the most appropriate choice. In some cases, that'll be English but in others, such as when travelling abroad, it'll be British. But, as the parent poster has pointed out, they're definitely not interchangeable terms.

Re:Nationality

[forgotten_my_nick]

> By referring to people from the UK as British,
> you're still going to piss off some Irish

Your going to piss off all of them. They are not British. Northern Ireland now you might annoy a few, but please don't refer to Ireland as British. It is not part of the UK either.

About that only thing British you can tag Ireland with is "British Isles", but even that isn't fully reconised in Ireland (despite it being only a geographical reference).

Re:Nationality

[jeremyp]

I came to the conclusion that the article really was talking about England since the National Health Service is organised by country i.e. the English NHS, Scottish NHS and Welsh NHS (I think) are all accountable to different governing instutions.

Re:Nationality

[Azghoul]

"Hint: England spends nothing whatsoever on its citizens. The NHS in England is run by the UK government."

Um. Tell us how much you pay in taxes every year and then try to write these two sentences again.

Re:Nationality

[gzunk]

Your points are well made, and mostly correct. I believe that the article *was* talking specifically about England. The NHS in England and Wales is run by Westminster, however NHS Scotland is run by the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Also seperate are the court and education system.

You will see a lot of statistics out there which are based on figures taken only from England and Wales, because Scotland does not have the same set of laws / conditions / spending. England and Wales are essentially a single administrative and legislative unit.

For example, there exists a smoking ban in Scotland, but not in England and Wales. Fox Hunting was banned in Scotland in 2002, but not until 2004 in England and Wales.

Re:Nationality

[mike2R]

Possibly not a nation, but England is certainly a country. Personally I would call England a nation as well, although it's certainly not a soverign state. There's a good wikipedia artical here.

Re: TypoMan strikes!

[famebait]

It was "pubic heathcare", you insensitive clod.

They mean, WHITE Americans

[s0l3d4d]

"Only non-Hispanic whites were included in the study to eliminate the influence of racial disparities. The researchers looked only at people ages 55 through 64, and the average age of the samples was the sammples was the same."

Great. Of course as the comparison data, they must have used the non-Hispanic and non-mainland-European Brits to compare them to. I didn't know NHS would have that data available.

What if e.g. the Hispanic people would have showed to be healthier in US than in Latin America? Or Black Americans as opposed to Black British, Black Africans, Black Latin Americans, Black Swedish, Black Canadians and so on...

Why do they make the conclusion that ALL Americans are so and so, based only on selected WHITE Americans of a certain age? Because they still think there is a White MAJORITY of people?

Re:They mean, WHITE Americans

[iggymanz]

Because they still think there is a White MAJORITY of people?

In the USA, that is the case:

"Nearly 217 million people, or 77.1 percent of the total population, reported as white," http://www.govspot.com/news/reports/population.htm

Sweet tooth & work stress

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

"Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English."

I am dutch, but have been to the states a lot as my parents have lived there on several occasions. My impressions:

Higher diabetes rates could well be explained by the large amounts of sugar in lots of food products in America. Even the bread was very sweet to my senses, let alone the rediculous amounts of soft drinks consumed( "would you like a refill for that half-a-litre of coke you just drained?" ).

Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.

Also less physical exercise will not help either conditions.

But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.

Re:Sweet tooth & work stress

[mgblst]

Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.
 
From my experience in the UK with working with Americans, I would say that most stress for Americans comes from having to work with other Americans.

Re:Sweet tooth & work stress

[mrogers]

But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.

I'm sure it's got absolutely nothing to do with industrial pollution. Only a paranoid hippy would think that.

Re:This is a trash study

[arethuza]

Because we decided as a nation that it should be a right that want to grant to our fellows - and I'm very proud of this fact.

Bank holidays can come out of annual leave

[lga]

No, you are wrong.

UK law gives you four weeks holiday, which is 20 days a year if you work 5 days a week, but the law does not give anyone time off on bank holidays. Some employers will give you a paid day off, but some will make you use your annual leave allowance if you don't want to work on a bank holiday.

There is lots of information here and here.

From adviceguide.org.uk:

If your employer gives you bank or public holidays off and pays you for them, they will count towards your four weeks' holiday unless your employment contract says that you get bank/public holidays on top of the holiday the law gives you. For example, if you work five days a week and you get eight paid bank holidays off each year, these are taken off the 20 days' holiday the law gives you.

Mate, get used to it.

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Those Texans will always keep fucking up their geography.

YEAH RIGHT!!!!

[JollyFinn]

But which has less healthcare costs per kg of bodyweight!!!!

Nationalized Healthcare Good For Business

[SoupIsGood Food]

Y'know, I get the feeling I'd do a lot better with my career if I were to strike out on my own as an independent consultant or by founding a small start-up. The problem is, I have a health condition that requires a trip to the emergency room once every few years, and some seriously expensive medicine to keep it under control. There is no way in hell I can find affordable health insurance on my own, and I can't afford the enormous cost of an ER trip out-of-pocket, or the couple hundred bucks per-month in medication while I'm in the "Eat ramen, max out the credit cards and work out of the garage" phase any solo gig or small company goes through for the first year or so.

Even if I didn't have the health condition, and were fit as a fiddle, I'd be doing the equivalent of driving without car insurance. I'm one serious traffic accident or cancerous tumor away from financial ruin if I don't have healthcare.

So, I turn down all kinds of consulting gigs, and leaf wistfully through my file of business plans, and wonder, do I love my country more than I love my career? I'm poorer and less fulfilled by living in a country without a single-payer system. I'm dependent on a corporate benefits package, and unable to pursue the American Dream.

I could emigrate to New Zealand in a heartbeat, as they're looking for tech workers there and would put me on an immigration fast-track. I really like Montreal and Halifax, too... but I'm a New Englander at heart, and I would like to stay where I feel I belong, where all my family and freinds are.

Now I find out that even with a company-funded HMO, I'm not as healthy, either. I mean. what the hell am I getting for my healthcare dollar? It's a serious chunk of change out of my paycheck and my employer's operating budget, and an expense that gets more and more and more expensive every year without returning much in the way of improvement in quality of service or quality of life. As far as I can tell, I'm just paying to fund Washington lobbyists and golden parachute accounts for HMO and Big Pharma execs.

I think it's time to put to rest the United State's overpriced, poorly managed and underperforming healthcare system, and join the rest of the civilized worl in the 21st century.

Re:Nationalized Healthcare Good For Business

[SoupIsGood Food]

Well, this just goes to show that the model of Health Insurance is a rotten one for healthcare. Fortunately in this day and age, it's usually just a synonym for "HMO."

Otherwise, under your model of "insurance", I would be dead, as I'd quickly be pauperized to the point of no longer being able to afford medicine, doctor visits or emergency care. I fail to see how any system preventing this, "socialist" or not, is BAD.

It's nice to know the doctrinaire right-wingers really are out to kill me.

Strange Result

[praksys]

Averege expected life spans for the US and the UK are nearly identical, and the average expected life span for non-hispanic white Americans is considrerably better than the UK average. So what does this study mean?

(1) Being more sick more often won't actually make a difference to how long you can expect to live? Sounds implausible.
(2) Americans get sick more often but their health care is better so they live just as long or longer? Sounds more plausible, although it seems like too much of a coincidence that better healthcare is almost exactly balancing worse health.
(3) Maybe better access to health care in the US results in a higher rate of diagnosis, rather than a higher rate of illness? That would explain the nearly identical lifespan, but only if the better access to healthcare makes little difference to lifespan.
(4) A difference in medical culture, where doctors in the US are more likely to diagnose and attempt to treat problems that doctors in the UK would just tell their patients to live with? I know that psychiatrists and psychologists in the US are very quick to diagnose and prescribe drugs compared to Japan or New Zealand (the other two countries that I am familiar with). Maybe there is something similar going on with the medical profession in general.

Lack of exercise and bad food

[GreatDrok]

The fundamental problem in large parts of the US is that people spend far to little time walking anywhere compared with the UK. Also, it is often difficult to find good quality food amid all the wasteland of fast food joints. I actually ate less than I do in the UK when I was last in the US because the food was so awful. I'm not claiming the UK has great food but you guys have it much worse. Portions are too large and the food is too greasy. Worse, when you are on a budget this high calorie/low nutrition junk food ends up being attractive.

Add the rotten food to the car culture and you have a disaster. The UK is sure to follow this trend although it is much easier here to live close enough to work that you don't have to drive (I cycle). Just 30 mins exercise a day would make a world of difference (I try to get an hour in) and there is no reason why you should pay to get it at a gym. Heck, even if you do drive try parking 15-30 mins walk away from work and go the rest of the way in on foot. When I do have to use my car I do that and I still get in quicker than I would if I tried to drive the last couple of miles.

Re:Lack of exercise and bad food

[maxume]

I would say it is possible to walk into applebees and similar places and order a decent meal. Harder than ordering garbage, but possible. Applebee's isn't to blame for their menu, their customers are.

I remain rather unconvinced about salt. Apparently it can be a problem if your blood pressure is genetically sensitive to it, but other than that, unless you eat a veritable mountain, kidneys and sweat glands will take care of it, that's a big part of what they do, maintaining sodium balance. Time and time again medical common sense is proven to be wrong(ulcers, bloodless surgury), where's the research showing me how bad salt is for me?

Have to agree there

[Unski]

Yeah, have to agree there - we may have less extremes of wealth and poverty, but I still have to get the bus from Old Swan to Liverpool City Centre sometimes, and it is a truly depressing journey though what I can only describe as Dickensian squalor - a long, long road of burnt-out terraces, vandalised pubs, closed-down shops not least of which is this hideous, oppressive 60's market that need pulling down desperately. Butty shops litter this grim landscape. I think environment clearly shapes our health, it's almost brainless of me to point it out.

Most saliently, I'm reminded of 'Chips or Crisps woman' - one morning an obese couple got on the bus with their daughter - the woman was so fat that she _did_ look like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. And the kid was screaming, and she was asking '...what? what? you hungry? do you want chips or crisps......chips?.......crisps?'

This was at 7.30am, and I felt truly sick. The kid plumped for crisps btw.

Re:Have to agree there

[Unski]

I am particularly supportive of people who log on to American websites and start talking like Jolly Old England.
Then it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance old fellow. I do hope you will drop in for a spot of tea some day - the Queen is likely to be popping-by next week and it would be a capital idea if we could have a real living American join us, see what all the fuss is about so to speak. Toodle-Pip.

Re:Attack of a Pride of Monkeys?

[Kent Simon]

I've read the opposite. The koala's appendix ( i believe its called a coelem ) is eight feet long!, the human's is tiny in comparison and we can live without it. The appendix contains bacteria, that in other animals are used to break down cellulose, something our stomach enzymes can't do by themselves.

It takes quite a bit more plumbing to digest plant matter. Cows have three stomachs, koala's have a huge ass appendix. We're much closer to carnivore in the internal piping than a vegetarian.

One more point: poverty

[Bombula]

Mod parent up.

Spot on, poster. One point you missed though: despite the long hours and few vacation days in the US, there are more Americans in poverty now in real terms than at any time since the Great Depression. For tens of millions of Americans, despite all the work they are still dirt poor. This is for several reasons:

- Minimum wage is not tied to any meaningful cost of living index.

- The official 'Poverty Line' is similarly not based on any meaningful cost of living index (it is uselessly taken as 3 times the cost of food; food is dramatically cheaper now than even 25 years ago, and much less healthy, so this metric is positively retarded).

- Rent on property has gone sky high as the economy has grown, meaning the cost of even the crappiest housing is essentially unaffordable for a minimum wage worker.

And lastly, Employers are becoming increasingly exploitative, harkening back to 19th Century labor practices. Labor is less organized now and unions are weaker (where is a Wal Mart workers union for their 900,000 employees?). With so-called 'unskilled' jobs, employers encourage high turnover so they don't have to give pay increases with all sorts of draconian practices.

On this last point, culpability falls largely on the government. Without regulation, unbridled capitalism is taken America steadily in the direction of Asian sweatshops. Supply and demand in the labor market defies all textbook economic logic because workers have no time to shop around for the best jobs, or to switch jobs when a better one becomes available and because they have no access to information about what other jobs might be available. Sure, you might get a dollar an hour more somewhere else, but if they withhold the first weeks' pay there, you can never switch because you won't ever be able to pay the rent or buy food if you miss a week's wages. Millions of people are that close to the edge. And so without rules - without government regulation - keeping companies from fucking low-wage workers, guess what? Those workers get fucked.

So the point you missed is that millions of Americans are in a state of profound poverty. Sure, the US has pretty good general public infrastructure - roads, water, electricity - so it doesn't seem like poor people are living in the same poverty and desperation that exists in places like India, but in many instances they are. The toll on a person's health from the stress of poverty alone probably outweighs the toll of long working hours and few vacations. Bill Gates works 80-hour weeks, so I hear. He probably doesn't have the kind of stress-related health problems that a single mother holding down two jobs has, even if she only works a 60 hour week.

Be sure to read Nickel and Dimed for more information about the impossibility of surviving in America on minimum wage.

There are few things coming to mind....

[JollyFinn]

The combination of following...

These are mentioned in article but not enough to explain it entirely.
Obesity.
Unhealthy food.
Lack of exercise.
Stress.

These are not mentioned in the article...

Air pollution from cars and power plants.
Chemicals that can cause health problems, dumped to environment getting to people.

Look at the cancer rate its double in US, so there must be something that causes that problem. And its probably the attitude towards environment biting back. When nobody cares if they pollute their neighbours habitat the result is that all get pollution in their environment. And in the end just like wild animals we humans get affected by the pollution we put in our environment, and we all get some health problems because of that.

The Japanese work long, not hard

[Oldsmobile]

As onyone who has worked in Japan will tell you, even though work days are long, they don't actually work very much.

However, in The States they really make people work hard, especially managers. And there are always PLENTY of managers in the work place.

I guess it is because managers can legally be made to work crazy hours with no compensation.

How sick?

[caluml]

American employee: Hello Boss, I can't come into work today. I'm seriously sick.
American employer: Oh, how sick?
American employee: Well, I'm in bed with my sister.

it's a good thing

[tinkerton]

this means the weak are effectively being weeded out, which will in the end lead to a stronger, conservative America!

the sad thing is, I have to state explicitly that I'm being sarcastic here...

Variance in Climate Extremes?

[Quirk]

The U.K. like Canada and much of Europe has a temperate climate. The U.S. on the other hand has a range in cliimate from temperate to near tropical.

The recent influx of diseases like West Nile disease suggests a warmer north is facilitating the spread of tropical diseases. I believe there's a suggestion that tropical climates or climates with extended warm seasons and no freezing winters breed a greater diversity of diseases and disease carrying hosts. Heat is also a stress factor and can complicate bad air conditions.

It would be interesting to see the demographics broken down between the northern U.S. and the far south.

just my loose change

Re:This is a trash study

[Afty0r]

I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.

Wow, which UK do you live in? I've had to deal with the NHS about a dozen times in my life, and with private hospitals just twice. I can say without a doubt that if I ever require anything important done, I will opt for private treatment every time.

The incompetence of our NHS, the apathy of their "professionals" and utterly abysmal levels of customer service lead me to believe it is just a scheme designed to ensure that healthcare professionals have the right to a paypacket without actually having to compete with others in their field.

I have been given the wrong treatment twice, diagnosed incorrectly three times, almost killed by an allergic reaction to an antibiotic when I was twelve years old, and was given 10x the adult dose by a doctor who could barely speak any English, I have been refused treatment for 2 debilitating physical injuries suffered in my teenage years which now in my late 20s restrict my ability to enjoy sports and sometimes to even walk normally.

I have no dentist and cannot get one, and apparently eyecare I must arrange and pay for myself... I can safely say that if we had no NHS and only private sector medical care I would have a much higher quality of life.

In Praise of Idleness

[gihan_ripper]

It seems this is the only thread going today.

Anyway, I thought I should mention a great essay of Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness . His argument takes the extreme view that we should only need to work for four hours a week. Empirically, the argument derives from the experience of Britain during the second world war when most of the productive capacity of the country was spent on maintaining the war. And we didn't starve.

Of course, Russell is being a little toungue-in-cheek by calling his essay In Praise of Idleness. He doesn't really mean that we should watch TV for the remaining 108 hours of the (waking) week. Rather, he imagines a regime in which we need only do 'unpleasant' work for four hours to earn our income, and the rest of the time could be spent wisely on whatever might suit our tastes. Partially, this seems to be the ethos of Google labs, where a third (I think) of developers' time is given over to their own projects.

Emphasising posts above

[ishmaelflood]

My parent's generation, the returning soldiers (etc) from WW2, voted for the Labour government whose central plank was the Welfare state - universal state provided healthcare, universal state provided education.

I think those people (and the soldiers (etc) of WW1) had put their lives on the line for society, and had a right to define which way it should go.

I'd rather live with their vision, faults and all, than that of assorted isolationist fat-cats.

Oz

[ishmaelflood]

My contract is pretty typical (for information).

I get paid:

20 days annual vacation - some of which have to be taken during plant shutdown

10 days public holidays

12 days flexed off (2 hours per week back as one day per month, approx) - 6 have to be taken on specified shutdown days.

37 hour working week, overtime is in theory payable, in practice I just flex more time off as it suits.

1.5 days per month accumulative sick leave to 120 days max (weird logic applies after that)

5 days per year accumulated long service leave - accessible after 10 years.

Compared with the UK, I'm behind on annual leave, ahead on flex time off, and the long service leave more or less makes up for the AL deficit. Sick leave is about line ball in practice - except that in Oz it is culturally acceptable to take sick days off at ones discretion.

"Self-reported health issues"?

[silasthehobbit]

I was reading this report on the BBC website earlier today, and I thought then that there is always the possibility that there is a flaw in the study method itself. As the study looks at self-reported health issues, you could also draw the conclusion that people in the US are more aware of health problems than the British.

I'm British and I haven't been to the doctors in about five years. I know several people who aren't even registered with doctors. No-one I know of my age (36) has had tests for prostate cancer, checked themselves for testicular cancer or even has regular annual check-ups.

There's a possibility, IMHO, that relying on self-reporting of illness would produce this kind of result in the older generation of Brits, as they're still following the "just get on with life and don't bother the doctors" mentality of those who grew up in the aftermath of WWII.

My mother had a lot of pain in her lower back for years - when I eventually persuaded her to go to the doctors he got her to go to hospital. They did a scan of her lower back - nothing wrong with it - but noticed something wrong with one of her kidneys (it had never grown from when she was a child). So they took another scan higher up to have a better look at that. Then noticed something wrong with her liver. So they took another scan higher up and saw that she had severe cancer of the liver (despite her being a non-smoker and a very light drinker). She died about 6 weeks later.

She would never have thought of getting either her kidneys or her liver checked out. If she had then maybe she would still be alive. But, like so many people from her (and her parents) generation going to the doctor was only something you avoided as you didn't like to bother him/her.

As usual, your views may vary.

--
silas

Re:"Self-reported health issues"?

[G. W. Bush Junior]

You should look up the study itself.
The whole point that they checked biomarkers to make sure that it wasn't a bias in the self reporting, and it wasn't.

Re:"Self-reported health issues"?

[jridley]

It's funny, I don't go to doctors because they never find anything wrong with me. The only trouble I've ever had are colds and flu, which they can do nothing about, and a stress fracture in my leg, for which the advice was "well, take it easy until it stops hurting."

OK, I have had strep throat twice. I went in and said "I have strep throat. Give me a prescription for some antibiotics." Had to pay $150 for the tests and whatnot so they'd give it to me.

It doesn't take long before "Yeah, you're sick. You'll get better on your own, there's nothing we can do to make it faster. Gimme 150 bucks." gets old.

market induced hypocandria

[smokin_juan]

I should imagine that the reason so many americans are unhealthy is that they are told, repeatedly, by "official" sources, that they are sick.
If I lived in a hazy black and white world where colors might become unnaturally saturated, bright and vivid by taking a pill I might go get some. "If you think you might have any of these symptoms go see your doctor and ask about x... NOW!"
If you go to the doctor enough they will find something wrong with you and they will do something to cure it because you don't have to pay for it and therefore have no incentive to question their judgment. [Many] Doctors have become used car salesmen in white coats with fat wallets (remember Stanly Milgrams "Obedience to Authority"). It's no wonder that a doctors strike in Israel a few years ago caused havoc in the mortuary business after the strike had caused the mortality rate to drop fifty percent... would probably drop seventy-five percent in the states.

I wonder how many americans are sick compared to how many americans are actually sick.

On the other hand

[No Such Agency]

In contrast, when my mother had breast cancer, whatever she needed, she got, and fast too. Surgery the day after tomorrow? No problem. Home care nurse? No problem. And no cash exchanged hands - my parents didn't have to sell their house to pay for it all. No system is perfect, but I have few complaints about Canada's public health care (now if only I could find a GP in this town who's taking patients...).

What about survival rates?

[Moridineas]

What about survival rates?

A quick google turned up a study on cancer survival rates in America and Europe: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x _Study_Compares_U_S__and_European_Survival_Rates.a sp

Here's an article on cancer survival in the UK: (google cache): http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:VZmy8v8wLdMJ:w ww.ntrac.org.uk/About/QA.aspx&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk& cd=11 (claiming that UK survival is on the average less than America or European)

BBC article on survival rates http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/546846.stm

For those that don't want to read--much higher survival rates in the US for most cancers (gastric cancer being a difference). No, it's not US and UK, so not directly comparable, but an interesting study nonetheless, especially for the countless posters coming out of the woodworks declaring the infinite superiority of socialized healthcare (though I still fail to see how socialized healthcare systems in and of themselves prevent cancer and diabetes..)

My point in posting this ISN'T to cast doubt on the article's study, or to deny that Americans are pretty damn unhealthy (we too often are). It's merely to respond to the people who seem to to place a great deal of their mental energy on the existence of government institutions, and when these institutions are absent blame all ills on their absence.

Re:ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN

[smchris]

What's your point?

Haggis _will_ kill you? Or haggis is good for you?

Guinness we already know is good for you.

Re:This is a trash study

[Tim C]

The fact that we democratically decided that it should be.

The fact that it's basic human decency to help those less fortunate than yourself, particularly those in potentially dire need.

The fact that when a single life is needlessly cut short, the whole society is affected in some way.

Failing all that, simple enlightened self interest. Even if you can afford to pay for your healthcare or insurance now, can you be sure of that in the future? Heaven help you if you fall on hard times, or require treatment that your insurance won't cover.

Re:This is a trash study

[cabraverde]

>> I believe health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich, and I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.

Hear Hear! And don't forget food. What good is the right to health care without food? While we're at this, how about a right to guaranteed housing, a good job, and happiness!

I agree with you on the guaranteed food and housing, Mr sarcastic social darwinist. A good job and happiness are things that you can take at your own pace once you know you're not going to die of hunger or exposure.

Re:Vegetarism vs veganism

[fireboy1919]

Not each year. More like once every four years. Also that's how it's generally done, not a requirement.

The hormone that causes a mammal to give milk is well known and available. If you wanted to lactate, you could take it.

And I'm assuming you're probably a guy.

Is this off-topic yet? I can never tell.

Re:Attack of a Pride of Monkeys?

[Liam Slider]

Nitwit...our disgestive tract is evolved around an omnivore's diet. We can process plant matter, but not as well as dedicated plant eaters which we aren't designed to be. We can process meat, but not quite as well as dedicated carnivores. What we're evolved towards is a more flexable diet, but one which does nutritionally require materials from both plants and animals. We're similar to bears, racoons, coyotes, and a number of other predators in that respect. And it's proven a superior survival mechanism in nature than being either a pure herbavore (which vegitarians obviously aspire to be), or being a pure carnivore. Omnivores for the win!

How about HYGENE

[puntloos]

And no, I don't mean the subject the way you would think. I am saying Americans are TOO HYGENIC. Or to elaborate:

- Clean your kitchen? Antibacterial soap!
- Slight cough? Penicillin!
- Washing yourself? Every day a shower.

From a CONSUMER point of view it would make sense to try to keep as healthy as possible by eliminating all those evil bacteria. Kill them, use extra-strong cleaning products. Slightly sick? Use penicillin or whatever other 'industrial strenght' medicine.

And america is of course on the very bleeding edge of consumer-driven marketing where each soap is antibacterial by now, cause it sounds sensible.

From a MEDICAL point of view however, this approach is not a good idea. It's all in the way diseases and bacteria propagate. Use some type of 'killer' on a colony of bacteria, they die.. until the time one lucky bacteria accidentally is resistent against the killer.. and that one lives, multiplies, spreads..

With the result that that strain of bacteria can not be killed by simple means anymore. Now if this would only apply to the common cold, then well sure. But you're in trouble when you (accidentally) hit the SERIOUS bacteria, and make those resistent too.

And so on.

The lesson is: 'Only fight what really NEEDS to be fought'

Ah... that explains the cheap food

[hagbard5235]

That must be why our groceries are so expensive and inaccessible. Or the total lack of improvement over time in our electronics. Or the constant increase in price in our clothing.

The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action. Every other market you care to point to either

a) Has seen declining prices and increasing quality.
b) Involves trade in a finite commodity (think land, even gas goes up and down with the commodity price, which goes up and down with supply and demand).

I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.

Re:Ah... that explains the cheap food

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.

Can you say "tulips"?

Re:Ah... that explains the cheap food

[Bearpaw]

I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere ...

... except where it's been stomped into a pulp by the corporatocracy's invisible jackboots. An honest free market, if we had one, would probably be better in many respects than what we have, even if it wouldn't be the utopia some folks seem to think. But despite all the lovely-sounding lip service they give the idea, neither corporatists nor their employees in DC (and elsewhere around the world) actually want a free market, for the fairly good reason that many of them would probably starve if they had to try to make a living in one. They don't want a free market, they want a market they can manipulate.

Oh, BTW, that cheap food? Government handouts to agri-business. Cheap clothes and electronics? Massive externalising of real-world costs and systematic control of worker populations. TANSTAAFMarket.

More attention is focused on serious diseases...

[TheNarrator]

People might suffer more chronic illnesses in the U.S than the U.K but when you look at survival rates for cancer and other serious diseases, the U.S does much better than the U.K. Also many people live with chronic ailments that would have killed them much earlier without quick access to things like heart bypass surgery and transplants that we receive in the U.S.

Probably the best study I've found debunking the "utopia" of nationalized health care: 12 Popular Myths About National Health Insurance.

Re:Poverty already accounted for

[Bombula]

the study results compensate for income, education, age, race and gender

You may find my lack of faith in the power of statistical 'compensation' disturbing, but it seems to me that poverty is a bigger problem in a country with dramatically fewer government-provided support mechanisms for citizens. The NHS, for all its problems, offers vastly greater security - both physical and psychological - to impoverished British citizens than the level of security (or lack thereof) that poor Americans without healthcare have to endure. I have no doubt there may be other factors in the US environment (physical, chemical, biological, etc) that make Americans sicker than Brits. But I have no confidence from the information in TFA that this study was even remotely successful or comprehensive in isolating those factors from the overarching social and psychological factors at work which include, but are not limited to, poverty.

So, the claim that poverty is irrelevant is at the very least shortsighted and naive, though it is more probably just plain moronic.

Answer is easy: tea plus less working hours

[rishistar]

Tea has much better health benefits than coffee (and in fact even helped keep illnesses down in grime filled cities in the Industrial Revolution). So Americans drink more coffee to keep them awake so they can work longer hours hence getting more stressed and more ill.

Betcha don't feel so clever about the Boston Tea Party now!!!

I'm pretty sure

[Maximilio]

We lag in the lifespan department, there, chum. You are evidently not reading something correctly. We just caught up with India on lifespan not too long ago. Try again.

Food and nutrients?

[Cannelloni]

Isn't it possible the health differences may be food related, and that even the rather greasy English cuisine, if you could call it that, is better than the American junk culture of pizza, McDonald's and KFC? Not much bettter, perhaps, but on the whole less fatty, sugary and salty? It would be interesting to see a comparison with data from France, Spain and Italy. French and Mediterranean food is regarded as the healthiest in the world.

richer too

[minus_273]

americans work more and are richer too. I think asia (HK, singapore, japan etc etc) have a similar or even more intensive work culture. There is a reason why some countires are on top and others are stagnating.

I'm sick alright!

[jbrandv]

Leave me alone! I'm trying to screw my sister...
Is that sick enough for you?

Re:This is a trash study

[Kataton]

While I do not agree that this is necessarily true. The fact is, society is not an entity, but a collection of entities. And, sometimes when the worse of these entities is eliminated many of the remainder are affected positively.

Let's begin with you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's all about Sleep

[tsu doh nimh]

Americans burn the candle at both ends far too much, and don't get nearly enough sleep. One of the biggest contributors to all kinds of illness, disease, and the ability to properly recover from both is the lack of sleep.

Re:"Horrible" US health care

[grub]

is so overburdened and inefficient that it takes months, MONTHS to get to a dentist for a painful tooth problem.

BULLSHIT. Absolute bullshit. I had an impacted wisdom tooth, had an appointment to see an oral surgeon after the infection went away and had the tooth out the same day as the scheduled appointment, only 3 days after I finished my antibiotics. Check my journal, I have an entry there written the day I had my tooth out.

The great thing about this discussion

[Morinaga]

The great thing about this discussion is that there's no stereotyping nor unsubstantiated claims of fact going on here.

Actually, this study draws a false correlation

[TallDave]

If you're not sick, you wouldn't NEED more health care, and you were, you would. So of course the U.S. spends more: because Americans are more sick! We shouldn't expect that spending money to treat sickness would prevent us from becoming sick in the first place.

Also, are they being diagnosed the same way? Based on what I hear from Londoners and their disgust with NHS (to the point some of them come here for treatment because NHS refuses to believe they have a chronic disease or puts them on a six-month waiting list), I suspect not.

But more than anything, I go back to the prevalence of tea drinking. It explains a lot, especially when you take Japan into account.

Re:This is a trash study

[glesga_kiss]

Speaking as someone who had to visit A&E just week, I have to say that you are talking out of your arse. In my experience the staff were outstanding and did everything I would have expected of them. They were 100% professional and I honestly considered complementing them at the time. Waiting times were very minimal and the department was spotlessly clean.

I've maybe been through ten various NHS proceedures / departments over the years. In only one case can I fault the treatment and/or level of care, and that was only because the ingrown toenail (full on surgery, was a bad one) which managed to retain some root and grow back. Even the nurses that came to my house to change the dressings were great, considering I was a whining teenager in pain.

Bitching about the NHS just seems to be the thing to do these days. From your experience, it sounds as though you've maybe been in and out hospital way more times than someone might choose to be. Without knowing more detail, I can't say whether or not you genuinely have been treated badly, or are perhaps just a little pissed off with the whole healthcare thing and are transfering those feelings onto the NHS.

Please don't take this as an insult or anything, but how do you treat people yourself? The phrase you used "The incompetence of our NHS, the apathy of their "professionals" and utterly abysmal levels of customer service" suggests to me that you yourself don't treat the staff very well. At the very least, you have no respect for them. What I'm trying to say here (without pissing you off) is that perhaps your own attitude might be part of the problem. I know that if I were a doctor or a nurse and had a patient that used quotations around the word professional when refering to my colleagues, that patient would get the minimum required treatment, while other, more deserving, patients get my help. Stands to reason.

Who competes for the ill?

[sterno]

I'm sorry but a private medical care system will never be effective. Why? Because sick people don't really have choices. Let's say that tomorrow everybody had exactly what you described. You, as a healthy consumer shop around for insurance and get amazing rates because you're healthy. Now, a few years later, you get sick. Your insurance company doesn't want you anymore because you're costing them way more than you're bringing in. So they up your premiums, or drop you all together.

There is no such thing as competition for the insurance dollars of the sick and that's why private health care will never be effective. Universal single payer health care is the best option because:

1) It provides a large pool of people paying into the system, thus making sure sick people get covered but that healthy people don't pay too much

2) It makes everybody overall healthier because poor people can get treatment for communicable diseases quickly rather than avoiding a doctor and spreading it to everybody

3) It's a national security benefit, see also, #2 plus the communicable disease being something suitable horrible like weaponized ebola (doesn't exist so far as I know, but theoretically it'd be bad)

4) It reduces the waste that's a fundamental part of private health care. That is, eliminating profits and the need to pay lots of people to try to weasel out of paying your bill. A publically heald insurance company was recently getting grief for paying out 80% of it's intake because it wasn't profitable enough. 80% efficient and it's getting grief for it.

Re:Eat fish. Not other meats

[vertinox]

Actually, a vegetarian diet combined with eating fish is probaly the best route to go. Eating lots of sushi and non-deepfried sea food will usually cover this. It is why people in Iceland, Norway, and Japan are so healthy... The massive amounts of fish in their diet.

Eating cow, pig, and chicken is tasty but the amount of fats, hormones, and various anti-biotics (plus bad feeding practices) tend to make mass farmed animals unhealthy to constantly eat.

If you do want the occasional steak, you should really put up the extra money and buy organic or range raised. You know... The ones that aren't fed other cows and live on open ranges and they can eat grass and not be in unsanitary farm factories.

Heck... They even taste better.

Re:So explain then

[osheaf01]

Why have schools?
Educate your child yourself.
Why have hospitals?
Heal your child yourself.
Why have motorways?
Build your own road.
Why have laws?
Shoot the evildoer yourself.
Why have taxes?
Keep all My Money for Me. Me Me Me Me Me ME MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why have civilisation?
Barbarism is much better.

The United States of Anarchy. Sounds cool, doesn't it?

The article actually SAYS it's not socialism

[TallDave]

However, Britain's universal health-care system shouldn't get credit for better health, Marmot and Blendon agreed.

Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.

Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.

"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.

It's the food supply, stupid

[Spinlock_1977]

I stopped eating man-made food on in January, when I weighed 215 pounds. I now weigh 185 pounds, and feel like I'm 35 instead off 75 (I'm actually 45). The relentless drive of market forces has caused food manufactures to squeeze every last penny out of their operations - replacing "real" ingredients with chemicals for cost reasons as they go.

You're not eating what you ate 20 years ago - that's no longer available. And that's why America is getting fatter and sicker faster than any other nation.

Re:It's the food supply, stupid

[RexRhino]

Don't blame "market forces" for people's bad habits. Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole ingredients, and healthy foods have never been easier or cheaper to get in history. I am a vegetarian, so I hardly eat pre-packaged food (most of it has animal products), and I can tell you a healthy, all-natural, home-cooked gourmet meal is probably half the price of a pre-packaged food item.

People eat crap, because people LIKE crap, and they are too lazy to stop. It isn't the fault of "market forces" that people eat crap, because the market has made it cheaper and easier than ever before to eat healthy.

Re:It's the food supply, stupid

[dtjohnson]

The problem is all the prepared or frozen stuff that people buy like rice-a-roni, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat canned soup, or tv dinners to save time and to get tasty meals. Look on the ingredients and there is always a LOT of salt (aka sodium) along with monosodium glutamate in some form ('sodium caseinate', 'glutamic acid,' 'hydrolyzed protein,' autolyzed protein'). The massive doses of salt causes a lot hypertension and the MSG causes nerve system problems (not to mention headaches) that lead to other things. If people just ate fresh food (fruit, vegetables, and meat) that they prepared themselves they would be a lot healthier and feel better, too.

Re:It's the food supply, stupid

[Mad Dog Manley]

Eating bad food is only part of the problem. A lack of exercise is far worse. I eat a varied diet, including large portions of meat, and even occasionally some deep fried food, as well as plenty of desserts. I also eat fruits, vegetables, and plenty of breads.

Why am I not fat, and could even be considered underweight? Is it genetics? Hardly. It's because I also exercise every week, at least 5 hours of moderately hard exercise. It's only a minor part of my weekly routine, but 5 hours of burning 1000 calories an hour is equal to approximately 2 extra days a week had I done nothing out of the ordinary.

you're complete wrong

[idlake]

The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action.

The US government-run health care institutions and programs are the most efficient in the nation, handily beating private health care systems in terms of cost, overhead, and at least equalling it in quality. And I believe if you looked into it, you'd find the same for education. Both health care and education have been broken by the market.

I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business

Adam Smith's invisible hand has a long list of preconditions to work, preconditions on the numbers and sizes of competitors, on information available to competitors and buyers, on the kinds of goods being exchanged, etc. Claiming that it "works almost everywhere" is just completely wrong and demonstrates an utter unfamiliarity with economic principles.

For health care and education, several of the preconditions are violated and therefore a free market approach doesn't work; the current failures of the US health care and educational system are a direct consequence of that (however, aspects of both health care and education can be left to the market--it just requires careful planning and design).

The free market works wonderfully when its preconditions are satisfied. It's the purpose of our government to ensure that free markets exist in as many goods and services as possible. It is also the purpose of our government to ensure that the small subset of goods and services the free market cannot supply efficiently are provided in some other way.

People like you, who have an irrational and factually wrong belief in the universal applicability of free market economics are at the source of a lot of our economic ills. It's adding insult to injury that after wrecking our health care and educational systems, you then turn around and blame the government for the mess you made through deregulation and privatization.

Insufficient economic motivation for that

[scotsalmon]

Giving the working population cash (and letting them decide whether to put it into health insurance or not) only works if we as a society are prepared to let people regularly die or be permanently maimed by treatable conditions like cavities or broken arms or pneumonia. As long as there is the emergency care "safety net" paid for by society -- and, honestly, there always will be because emergency workers can't be the insurance police, checking if you have enough cash or insurance before treating you -- then people have insufficient motivation to buy sufficient insurance for uncommon but expensive treatment.

In a simple but extreme example, economically it doesn't make sense for me to set aside enough cash to save myself if I get into a bad car accident or my house burns with me in it. I could never afford it and anyway, I don't have to -- emergency care will be provided regardless. Another poster noted that Americans seem to have too much respect for human life to let me die at the emergency room door.

Less obvious but, I suspect, also true: there is insufficient economic motivation to invest in preventive care. Getting a regular checkup and a prescription for $100 might avoid a $1000 emergency room visit, but that $100 pays for a lot of food and clothing and shelter that are clearly needed today, and society isn't willing to let me die at the door of the emergency room anyway, so my motivation to pay the $100 now isn't enough, and I end up costing everyone 10 times more.

Relying on that emergency system is not an efficient way to pay for health care, but as long as that system is in place, just giving workers cash means people _will_ rely on it. There are just a lot more obvious needs for that cash in many people's lives. Preventive care that might avoid the emergency room visit, and insurance to cover that visit if it happens, definitely look like luxuries in a lot of budgets.

Having employers automatically enroll employees in a health care plan takes many workers out of this wildly inefficient emergency care system and puts them into the slightly less inefficient semi-privatized insurance system. Also really not a great system for the reasons you mentioned, among others. Time to consider alternatives like a national single-payer system.

-Scot

Re:ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN

[elliotCarte]

ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN, you idiots

I won't argue because I don't really know the difference. I do know this: Your point would have been better taken if you explained the difference. You might have thrown 'UK' in on your explanation as well. As it is, many American readers still don't know the difference and will continue to use 'England', 'Britain' and 'UK' interchangeably (mostly UK when writing because it's shorter). You don't think anyone read your post and subsequently bothered to go study up on their English history, do you? Or would they study up on their British history... UK history? See what I mean?

Don't take it personally. Most Americans also don't know the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Hell, you might be surprised to find out how many don't know the difference between Switzerland and Sweden. At least misunderstandings about the identity of UK/Britain/England don't usually involve confusion with other countries. So... what IS the difference between England/UK/Britain? As far as we can tell from your post, you don't know either, just that England != Britain... and that we're all idiots for not knowing (or caring).

Mike: Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a tiger.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a tiger, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a Puma.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a Puma, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!

Vegetarians are NOT immune to the flu.

[raygundan]

I'm responding to the grandparent post that has been modded into oblivion, not yours. The one where some fool said:

I know you'll shake your head at it like everybody does, but the typical vegetarian gets no cancer, never gets influenza (yes your flu last year could be avoided if you dumped meat) and will never have the depression, bowel disease, heart problems and overweight that inflict meat eaters!

I would like to point out that I was vegan for three years and vegetarian for ten, and that I enjoyed the flu a half-dozen times in that stretch. People making claims like this are idiots.

I eat a little fish now, on advice from several doctors who were kind enough to point to well-done studies that argued for the health benefits. There is no reason that eating some meat is bad for you. There are, however, problems with getting an excess of iron (in men), too much fat from the wrong meats in excess, and so forth-- but the same downsides are true of anything with a lot of bioavailable iron or fat.

Meat does not magically cause the flu.

Something to add to this

[RobinH]

I was in Cuba a couple years ago and although they are very poor (everyone makes about $13 US per month) they were very very friendly and looked happy and healthy. They have highly trained doctors and other professionals.

So, I get myself on Google and discover that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans. Well, that shocked me.

This is a place where I can't drink the water, and the beef looked pretty scary. It's certainly possible that the more expensive stuff we have available to us (more food, more highly processed food), the worse our health could be. I read once that in Rome the rich people had plumbing with lead pipes (it was a luxury) but it ended up killing them faster from lead poisoning. It's possible something similar is happening to us in industrialized nations right now.

There's a reason for this.

[Corvaith]

Cash prices are higher for one major reason: collectibility. As doctors move over to automated systems, finally, it'll improve. Right now, the level of collections for cash customers for medical services is terrible. I don't remember the exact rate, but it's brought up often in the arguement over pushing towards electronic medical records. Insurance is reliable, you'll get it every time. Cash, you have to ask for up front or pretty much write it off, and asking for money up front is something many doctors aren't comfortable with doing once you get up into larger figures.

Medicine is horribly out of date in this way, and I'm not saying this to excuse them, because it really needs to change.

That doesn't count for pharmacy, obviously. I assume that probably has to do with some kind of price negotiation between the companies, but I don't really know.

USA is dying

[Dr Liebe Merkwurdige]

It is official; the WHO now confirms: the USA is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered US population when the WHO confirmed that the USA quality of life has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent UN survey which plainly states that the USA has lost more quality-of-life, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The USA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent WHO comprehensive assessment.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict USA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: USA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the USA because the USA is dying. Things are looking very bad for the USA. As many of us are already aware, the USA continues to lose quality-of-life. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

The employer-subsidized health plan is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its corporate members. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long-time employer-subsidy providers Bechtel and Citibank only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: the employer-subsidized health plan is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

National association AHIP states that there are 70,000 000 holders of Individual Policies. How many users of Medicaid are there? Let's see. The number of Individual Policies versus Medicaid payouts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70, 000 000/5 = 14, 000 000 state health plan users. Other health-plan costs are about half of the volume of Medicaid costs. Therefore there are about 7, 000 000 users of other health plans. A recent article put joint employer/employee health plans at about 80 percent of the USA market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Group Policies holders. This is consistent with the total payouts for Group Policies costs.

Due to the troubles of abysmal sales and so on, many Group Policies providers went out of business and were taken over by the Federal government, who administer another troubled health plan. Now Medicare is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that USA has steadily declined in quality-of-life. The USA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If US healthcare is to survive at all it will be due to custom from foreign elites. The USA continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save the USA from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the USA is dead.

Fact: USA is dying

Re:I disagree

[Nevyn]

I've never understood the (frequently European) mindset that when there is a possibility of making money, people instantly turn completely evil and ruthless.

I've never understood the (frequently American) mindset that when things are obviously broken it's socially unacceptable to fix it if someone is making money out of the status quo.

It's not just the doctors/CEOs that suddenly change. I recently saw someone I know on a respirator, having her lungs sucked out, for two weeks because "going to see a doctor" was too expensive (she was currently unemployed).

Re:Justify this

[greylouser]

Why? Why is it wrong that a person dies from a disease?

The problem here is not that a person may die from a disease, but that someone could help, and won't, because it isn't profitable.

So justify it. And do so without emotionally charged arguments, because we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer. That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with forcing me to pay for her care.

You're asking a whole lot here, since we're talking about morality, a subject with no inherent underlying truth. I think it's difficult to justify why all society should pay to catch the person who murdered someone else's mother, without using emotional arguments, but that's standard practice in most countries, even when the murderer likely won't kill anyone else.

Here's a non-emotionally-charged argument, though. You don't know if you're going to get cancer in the future, nor do you know if your children or grandchildren will get cancer. When healthcare providers treat someone else for cancer, or spend research money on treatment, they get practice and knowledge, and are thus in a better position to treat you, or someone you love, in the (uncertain) future.

I understand your position that, if you don't care about your own possible future treatments, or the possible future treatments of those you love, you shouldn't be forced to pay for the current treatments of those you don't love, but I think that path leads to a governmental system close to anarchy (e.g., by analogy, if you don't know someone who was murdered, you shouldn't have pay for their capture, and if you don't use a road, you shouldn't pay for it's upkeep, and if you aren't worried about being attacked by another country, you shouldn't pay for defense, etc.).

Ultimately I feel you need to be making an argument not based on generalities like "I don't want to pay for your mother's cancer treatment!" which frankly makes you sound like an ass, but rather based on the idea that more people would be better off in the long run under the system you propose. I think that's a much harder case for you to make (and a harder case for someone else to take issue with).

The System is Down

[jreedy21]

You're right, but for different reasons -- the twisted economics of private health care in the U.S. are such that insurance companies run like hell away from anyone who is sick.

When you see health plans marketed here in the States, it's done by showing healthy, happy people, not showing sick people receiving good health care. That's because insurers want to recruit customers who are in good health and leave those with diabetes or other chronic conditions for some other company. It's like a game of hot potato: who gets stuck with all of the diabetics and their lifelong health problems?

As for health care being a societal issue, that's right on. Some people can take action to be healthy and remain that way, and others may take action but still wind up getting heart disease or diabetes because of family history, etc. The people who live healthy lives and stay healthy, as well as the people who live less healthy lifestyles but still wind up not getting diseases -- these are the people who "pay" for the people unfortunate enough to get sick. The healthy peoples' low costs subsidize the costs of those who wind up getting sick. In a nationalized health care system, those costs are spread out over the entire society, and it's a wash overall.

In a private system, it's in the interests of insurers to seek out only the people who don't get sick -- also known as people without pre-existing conditions (those who haven't already been sick). Those with pre-existing conditions (diabetics) or those at risk for health problems (smokers, older people, etc.) are passed up, or charged far higher premiums, essentially locking them out of health care coverage if they aren't covered through their employer.

Here's an interesting factor that would be very, very difficult to isolate, but that may be having an effect on health in the U.S. vs. the U.K. -- how many Americans are staying in stressful, underpaid, overworked jobs because they don't want to lose their health coverage? Seriously, that's one of the top priorities for basically anyone here, whether they can keep their health coverage or not. If big employers like General Motors or Ford or Boeing start to phase out health coverage because of the cost it adds to their products, it's going to start to get even worse for us.

Not that it isn't already bad -- this is National Cover the Uninsured Week here, which is a good time to remind everyone of the following:

* There are 46 million people in the U.S. without insurance (about 20 percent of the population).
* The country spends more than 20 percent of its GDP on health expenditures.
* We spend more per person on health care than most industrialized nations, and despite our "top of the line" care and technology, we have significantly lower indicators or health than most of those nations.
* Hospitals (emergency rooms in particular) that provide charity care are becoming the first point of contact for many people who are uninsured, which is making it hard for some hospitals to stay financially solvent.

It's not at all an exaggeration to say our health care system is in a crisis right now.

Re:POSIWID

[ScentCone]

What's the purpose of health insurance companies? On paper it's to collect premiums and rationally allocate them to health care while paying the employees and investors. But what do they *do*?

Sorry, but descending into semantics and confusion over causality doesn't really help. If the reason I build a crosswalk at an intersection is to help pedestrians, and yet at least a couple of people are still killed by people running red lights... that does not convert my purpose for building the crosswalk into "a way to kill pedestrians."

The truth is that the vast majority of people who buy health insurance get exactly what they're buying: basic health care at tolerable prices, and the ability to undergo more substantial, rarer treatment (cancer, major car accident, etc) without automatically going bankrupt. Arguably insurance should only be about those more catastrophic situations, but the trend is to also use it more or less like a savings account... take a little out every week, and then only "pay" $10 when you visit the doctor for a checkup, etc. But that is "what they do." That's what they do for almost everyone that uses them. That is their purpose, and the people running those businesses make a living and pay back their investors while doing so. That's how it is on paper, and that's how it is in practice.

Of course, things are much more awkward now because everyone expects health care, as practiced by humans on humans, to be somehow perfect, and they're more than happy to take millions of dollars (with the help of a 30%-earning lawyer) from any practitioner or related institution under whose care things did not go perfectly. And, of course, we've now got million-dollar pieces of equipment that can do things no family doctor could ever have done a few years ago, and everyone just assumes that for a couple hundred a month for their entire family, that the machine that costs $1000/hour to operate should be at their disposal for every twisted ankle or playground bump on the head. Is it any wonder that insurance companies must play the heavy hand and try to reign it in... or, charge a fortune to actually cover the real costs.

Why people think that magically having the government provide all of these services will somehow make it cheaper is beyond me. It will just become another area of deficit spending... something insurance companies couldn't survive themselves.

Preventative care for diabetics

[ChrisMaple]

Just as I wouldn't buy sled dogs at a car dealership, I wouldn't look for diabetes prevention at a hospital. Try a gym.

Re:I disagree

[jsebrech]

I've never understood the (frequently European) mindset that when there is a possibility of making money, people instantly turn completely evil and ruthless. Do imagine hospital CEO's sitting around thinking how they can make people sick to get more money out of them?

It's not about evil, it's about the bottom line. CEO's have to turn a profit that is as good or better than the market performance. So, obviously, they will look at the most profitable ways of doing that. Treating a disease instead of curing it is generally more profitable, so more effort goes into the r&d of drugs that treat instead of cure.

If a CEO does not turn a profit because he "is a good guy", he is guaranteed to be fired by the board/shareholders. Shareholders are only interested in ROI. When was the last time you heard someone say "you know, I've got shares in Xyzzy, and they're turning a loss, but they do so many charitable works, so I'm buying some more stock!"? It just doesn't work that way.

Re:Justify this

[prurientknave]

Heck why stop there? why pay taxes? Let's privatize security, national defense, municipal services etc. I think there was a word for such a society. It was called hmmm F-E-U-D-A-L-I-S-M. Do you remember what that is moron?

Re:Justify this

[prurientknave]

This is what happens when illiterate boobs with no understanding of history are allowed to vote. They have no idea society has already struggled through all of these crises and realized working together is the better option. Privatized security whether from criminal action or from disease is not workable in the long run. If you want to see what privatized security looks like take a look at africa, without the concept of a nation state all you have are a series of private security/gangs running around looking out solely for themselves and only leads to the overall degradation of the standard of living in the majority of the african continent. This is why all successful countries have national militaries. A patient should be allowed to die if he/she so choses but there should never be a revocation of the social contract that we all stand together through thick and thin because we are americans. The biggest problem I think is that american public schools never teach simple morality tales to kids. Something as simple as aesop's fables would do. I remember a simple lesson I learned as a kid

United we stand, divided we fall.

It was simply taught, the teacher asked us to break some sticks individually then she tied another bundle together and asked us to take a shot.

UK has everything the US has, and more

[Sanity]

The UK also has a private healthcare system for those that want it, with the NHS providing a fall-back. Personally, having lived both in the UK and the US, I find the UK health-care system vastly more user-friendly, you just walk in to your nearest GP, sign up, and off you go. I have never waited longer than 10 minutes to see my GP in the UK once I have made an appointment, and many GPs offer same-day appointments.

I know a few people whose entire choice of career has been dictated by the fact that they live in the US, and have a health condition which means that they must work for a large company or they simply can't get health coverage. I can only begin to explain how medieval that seems to the rest of the Western world.

Input from an Ex Pat in the US

[Thumper_SVX]

There's a lot of comments on this story, and my comments will probably get buried under the load of other comments... but I feel I have to comment as a British citizen living in the US for the last 11 years.

My unscientific view is that there may be something in upbringing, or there may be something genetic that's not being taken into account in this study. Despite the fact that the study made a point of the fact that it excluded certain races the simple fact that the US is a literal melting pot of cultures throws a variable into the mix that I don't think has been considered. We don't know historically how healthy the Native American people were. Today's native Americans aren't "pure", but neither are the "White" Americans. Almost everyone I know (this is living in the midwest) can trace some native American heritage in their genetic makeup, whereas I'd hazard to guess that most British people wouldn't. This does throw in a genetic possibility in the occurrences of cancer for example. We don't know how prevalent cancer was in old native populations... we just don't have that data.

I know my example is not very scientific, but I have lived in America for 11 years now. That means that I've had enough time now to "go native" and live a lifestyle that isn't very different from that of my peers (though does sometimes seem a little different in subtle ways because of ingrained ideals that I can trace to my childhood). I don't think I eat significantly differently from my peers, though I do often eat less. I don't drink any more or less than most of my peers, and I live in the same areas, drive the same roads... hell I even eat the same Mississippi river catfish that we catch on a Saturday afternoon on occasion.

What do I observe? Despite living a very similar lifestyle, I am a lot healthier than my peers. Most people my age are overweight. While I'm not thin either, I have only once in my life gotten to the point I considered myself obese (but my doctor said I was just overweight)... and I put myself on a strict diet. A cultural thing? Perhaps. Most of my peers also are losing their hair (I'm 33 and still have a full head of hair) or going grey. Is this a symptom of a diet/exercise problem... or something different in their genetic makeup? I noted when I returned to England last year for a vacation, my friends I met up with were mostly in much the same condition as me. Compared to my American friends we would all have been considered significantly healthier.

Now, please note that I don't make any special efforts to stay fit. Oh, I go out to the gym once or twice a week but sometimes it will be weeks between visits because of my work or home life. I eat at the same places as my peers and colleagues, and don't necessarily order anything different. I probably do cook at home on the weekends more than most of my peers, but that's just because I enjoy making good dinners completely from scratch (something few people do; they usually buy pre-packaged goods at the store and call that "home cooking").

To extend my unscientific viewpoint further I have two children. My eldest is my step-daughter... her parents are both American. I also have a son who's mine. The health differences between my two children couldn't be greater. While they both eat the same, and my daughter is not fat (actually she's very slim), she has bad teeth and frequent health problems she's had her entire life. Maybe she was just unlucky, but my son couldn't be more different. He's healthy as a horse... strong and active. The only time I can remember ever having to take him to the emergency room was when he decided that since he had managed to lock himself in his room and couldn't open the door, a second floor window would make an appropriate exit. Now again, there's no difference in diet between both kids... and they do share at least 50% of the genes (my wife), but something in there is very different which results in both of them having significantly different health.

I know none of this is very scientific, but I feel th

Re:I disagree

[ceoyoyo]

Actually, in many cases it does. Sure lots of people have strong morals that cause them to turn down money and advancement to do what they believe is right. Maybe even most of them do. But SOME of them don't. Naturally those are going to be the ones who tend to get more money and advancement than average, which tends to put them in charge. I've just watched it happen, with disastrous results.

Greed makes people compromise on their morals. It's an instinctual thing. The worst person to make dictator is usually the one who WANTS to be dictator.

At the same time, I doubt that greed is directly responsible via poor hospitals and doctors for the results of this study. More likely it's poor lifestyle coupled with lack of skills and inability to pay for both better lifestyle and health care.

How many US schools have mandatory home ec programs these days? How many US parents have the time to either cook for their families or teach their kids to cook?

The cold, hard, selfish argument

[Valdrax]

So justify it. And do so without emotionally charged arguments, because we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer. That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with forcing me to pay for her care.

Alright. You really want the cold, hard, rational argument for altruism. Fortunately, you've handed us one of the best cases for such an argument.

The costs for treating and curing cancer are enormous. Chemo costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your life for a few years. Chances are really good that you can't afford those drugs as a sudden expense if you found out you had cancer today. This is true for many medical conditions. I had to have my gallbladder removed, and the total bill was $15,000 to my insurance company. An expense like that (due within a few months of it being incurred) would have killed me financially at the time.

So, it is in your best interest to pay a small fee every month to cover the costs of everyone else who is sick with the agreement that if you get sick, everyone else will cover your costs. This is the selfishly rational argument for altruism at its finest. You act as part of a group to help individuals face burdens that they cannot bear alone because they will be there for you should you face a burden that you cannot bear alone. It's why you help friends move; it's why you do weight lifting with a spotter; and it's why you pay for insurance right now.

That's right -- that's what insurance is at its core. You pay a monthy premium that amortizes the predicted average health costs you are likely to incur in your life which goes straight into paying for the care of others. Chances are that right now you aren't sick, but you're paying for the welfare of others. You do this because when your time comes around, others will pay for your well-being.

The average person will end up paying more into insurance than they will get back even with non-profit insurance. Many of us will die in a manner that is swift and incurable; we will not recoup the loss of money that went to pay for people put on life-support and expensive drugs. However, it's to our benefit to take the risk and put the money into the fund because there's always the chance that it will be we who are saved by a procedure we can't afford.

That's it: The rational argument for paying for others is at core that they will pay for you in a time when you cannot cover it yourself.

Re:Still doesn't work

[Firethorn]

That's why smart people will buy insurance for the critical and expensive but unlikely medical needs. That's what insurance is for. Insurance isn't supposed to be used multiple times a year.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup

[dbonny]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but high-fructose corn syrup could be a major cause of this health discrepancy. According to Wikipedia, HFCS has "been linked to health problems such as obesity and diabetes."

Most interestingly (and I assume this is talking about Britain as well): "Currently HFCS remains an almost uniquely American phenomenon as, although it is not actually banned in Europe (and other markets), the relative greater availibilty of cane sugar against maize in these markets (coupled with generally negative consumer attitudes towards it [particularly in Europe]) has made it uneconomical to produce it there." Wikipedia.

HFCS is mostly consumed through soda, but that "healthy" fruit juice parents give their kids can contain even more.