Posted on 05/03/2006 11:03:40 AM PDT by baldeagle390
Maybe we should have remained a colony.
Americans Sicker Than Britons?
Calvin Malone of Milwaukee says he runs four times per week to stay in shape. He was working out at the Downtown YMCA on Tuesday. Throughout the facility are signs encouraging patrons to exercise and embrace a healthy lifestyle. A report released today says middle-aged Britons are much healthier than their American counterparts.
Richard Nord, 71, from Shorewood, shown at the Downtown YMCA on Tuesday, says he has had a disciplined exercise routine since he was 40 years old. Despite paying more than twice as much for health care, Americans are less healthy than Britons, says a new study.
Disease Rates: Ages 55-64 Disease rates among 4,386 white Americans and 3,681 white Britons, ages 55-64.
U.S. 12.5% Have diabetes
15.1% Have heart disease
5.4% Have had heart attacks
9.5% Have had cancer
3.8% Have had strokes
8.1% Have had lung disease
Spend $5,274 in annual medical costs
U.K. 6.1% Have diabetes
9.6% Have heart disease
4.0% Have had heart attacks
5.5% Have had cancer
2.3% Have had strokes
6.3% Have had lung disease
Spend $2,164 in annual medical costs
Source: Journal of the American Medical Association GRAPHIC: More health comparisons between England and the U.S.
Compared with the British, white, middle-aged Americans are substantially less healthy, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Pick the disease - diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, lung disease, high blood pressure - and Americans are much more likely to have it than their counterparts on the other side of the pond.
"Americans are much sicker than the English," the study concluded.
Adding insult to injury, Americans pay more than twice as much for their medical care as the Brits, $5,274 a year per person in the U.S. vs. $2,164 in England, the study notes.
Doctors not associated with the study say it is the latest evidence of befuddling health disparities in the U.S. compared with other industrialized countries. It also dispels the often-cited erroneous claim that America has the best health care in the world, doctors said.
"In some cases, the wealthiest Americans were sicker than England's poorest," said Julie Mitchell, an assistant professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin who practices at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital. "That's crazy."
Indeed, when the researchers divided people from the two countries by both education and income levels, Americans with higher incomes and who were more educated often had higher rates of ailments such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease than English who were in the bottom strata.
The study looked at health data and self-reported disease rates among 4,386 Americans aged 55 to 64 and 3,681 Brits in the same age range. To eliminate the confounding issue of race and health status, only non-Hispanic whites were included in the analysis.
The data came from government-funded health surveys in the two countries. The study was sponsored by the governments of the two countries.
Overall, the diabetes rate was 6.1% in England vs. 12.5% in the U.S. The cancer rate was 5.5% in England, compared with 9.5% in the U.S. The heart disease rate was 9.6% in England, compared with 15.1% in the U.S.
Attempts to compare illnesses The study is one of the few attempts to compare illness rates in the U.S. and England while doing so for people with comparable social status, said co-author Michael Marmot, a physician and epidemiologist at University College London.
Marmot said that it has been known for years that life expectancy is shorter in the U.S. than in the United Kingdom. More than 20 countries have greater life expectancy than the U.S. Now there is evidence that disease rates also are higher, he said.
"And they are higher for people of high education, intermediate education and low education," he said.
The disparity remained even after researchers adjusted for various risk factors such as smoking and obesity.
Obesity is much more common in the U.S., while heavy drinking is more prevalent in England. Smoking rates in the two countries are about the same.
Doctors said the differing illness rates likely are the result of a variety of factors.
Even though much more money is spent on health care in the U.S., the emphasis is different.
In England, much more attention is paid on primary care and making sure everyone gets basic medical care.
"You get to the problems earlier," said Barbara Starfield, a distinguished professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. "They are much better with children, also."
She noted that health care in the U.K. itself is not the best in the industrialized world. So, for the U.S. to have higher disease rates than England supports other research showing that American health care ranks well below many other industrialized countries.
Is our strategy working? The study suggests that the U.S. is not using its health care dollars to the greatest benefit, said Andrew Bindman, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has studied the health care systems of the two countries.
"Is our strategy of innovation, technology and specialization getting us the return on investment?" said Bindman, who was not a part of the study.
Bindman also said lower rates of exercise in the U.S. and a propensity for eating processed junk food here also may explain some of the higher U.S. disease rates.
To bolster their findings, the researchers used a separate database of biological markers of disease among more than 7,600 white people aged 40 to 70 from the two countries.
Once again, they found a troubling pattern in the U.S. For instance, there were higher levels of inflammatory substances such as C-reactive protein and lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the good kind) in Americans.
The study's authors did not identify the causes of health disparities between the two countries.
However, they suggested it might be related to stress from the circumstances under which people live and work in the two countries.
Some of it may be due to the effects of social rank and status, they added.
Whatever the causes, doctors said, the U.S. health care system needs to devote a lot more attention to the issue.
"We need to figure this out because it's making us sick," Mitchell said.
Yeah, but you better bring your dentist with you!!
Yeah, the ability to actually get it when you need it does tend to jack the price up a bit. ;)
what's the deal with dental care? I'm not familiar.
I have a little experience with the NHS. I'm guessing I'm right.
Needed to be said AGAIN......PLUS
How many BRITS DIED because they COULD NOT get CARE? That would skew the numbers a bit. And, how many Mexicans did they save the lives of?
...Because we simply have MORE people here?
Well I'm glad to see not everyone bites off on this media crap. The fact that more Americans suffer from things like diabetes, heart attacks and cancer has as much to do with our medical system as the fact that people whose long neglected cars that end up in the junkyard has to do with car manufacturers. Americans, by in large, do not live healthy lifestyles. We eat too much junk, work too hard and watch too much TV. The net result is, our bodies break down. This poll, for whatever it is worth (which ain't much) is more of an indictment of lifestyles than of healthcare systems. Leave it to our lying, liberal media to distort it to support socialized healthcare.
No mention of elective surgery availability either.
Many Brits now have private health insurance because the waiting lines and/or eligiblity requirements are horrendous.
Agreed...these statistics are for people who are alive and living with these conditions which means that people in the U.S. are being treated for their illnesses better than in the U.K.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I heard somewhere that Brits have a lower life expectancy. Perhaps they're not being properly diagnosed, which is why these numbers are so low.
Bogus article in so many ways.
Example: Our rate of cancer is double theirs. Of course, only survivors in each country are around to take the "self-identified" survey.
All this says is that more Americans make to a doctor in order to get a diagnosis in the first place.
I wonder if the Brits realize that poor Dental care is one of the biggest causes of strokes and heart attacks.
Many people immigrate to the USA because health care in their native land is relatively poor.
Let's re-do the survey and adjust for immigration status.
Statistics are made for Liars. Britain is small compared to the US. What would be appropriate would be to compare the health of Scotland, Wales, England, N Ireland, etc
to Utah, Nevada, SanFranciso, LA, and every state and SMSA and congressional district. The same is true of education statistics. Compare each PART of Europe to each PART of the USA.
The variance is more important than the average in this case.
Of course the Brits are healthier. When the sick ones die off, survival of the fittest demands that the healthy ones remain. In the US, the health care system keeps the sick ones alive longer.
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