Upper class white Americans are no healthier than lower class white Brits

[BurtWorm]

In general, Americans are in much worse health than their British counterparts, and researchers are "struggling" to understand why. The US health care delivery system is a major suspect.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6c9dee06-d9ff-11da-b7de-0000779e2340.html


Middle-aged English people are “much healthier” than their American counterparts, even though the US spends far more on medical care than the UK, according to a large international study published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Americans have significantly higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, lung disease and cancer than English people in the 55 to 64 age group.

Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University College London, who led the British arm of the study, said the findings would surprise international health policy experts. His US colleague, James Smith of the Rand Corporation in California, added: “You don’t expect the health of middle-aged people in these two countries to be too different, but we found that the English are a lot healthier than the Americans.”

The researchers who were funded by several US and UK government agencies, set out to look at the social and economic factors affecting health but shifted emphasis when large differences emerged between the two countries. The study looked both at the way people reported their own health and – to guard against any bias from self-reporting – at objective biological markers of disease from blood tests. Altogether there were about 15,000 participants.

Samples in both countries were limited to whites and excluded recent immigrants, so as to control for racial and ethnic factors.

[leftofthedial]

1. damned socialized medicine!

actually making people healthy

[CGrantt57]

2. Yeah! Frickin' Socialists...

Next thing you know, some Socialist Elected president of a Southern American country will offer us cut-rate gasoline.

Oh...wait..my bad...that did happen.

Never mind...

Carry on.

[philosophie_en_rose]

3. You hate us for our freedoms!!!

Freedom to die.

Freedom to get cancer.

Freedom to suffer.

:bounce:

[mrcheerful]

4. Freedom to tell others when they are alive or dead

Freedom to tell others how many kids they must have
Freedom to tell others if they can or can not have sex
Freedom of religion as long as its christen fundie type
freedom to interfere in another's life as long as they don't agree with my choice
Yep americas freedoms are many as long as you follow the leader

[lastliberalintexas]

5. Not sure why they are "struggling" to figure out why

Anyone who has sought and/or obtained any type of medical care in the US system within the past 5 years can tell the researchers exactly why. Doesn't seem like this would take a braintrust to figure out. :shrug:

[HereSince1628]

6. 55 to 64 year olds? Ruh ro - - All the LSD and free love was life

shortening!

Well, so was the DDT they were exposed to during the polio epidemic in their childhoods, the radioactive snow they ate, and the agent orange a couple million of us were exposed to in Vietnam and other countries during the SE Asia Wargames.

[smirkymonkey]

7. It's pretty incredible, since the traditional British diet seems to be

heavy on the meat and starch and fried foods. A lot of younger Londoners have a more sophisticated & varied diet these days, but it's well known that the British diet is not know for it's healthiness.

[philosophie_en_rose]

8. I don't think they eat as much as we do though. (generally speaking)

Portions are smaller in Europe.

Besides, how much English food can anyone eat. :P

(joking).