Crickey!

5 May 2006



Brits are Healthier than Yanks

Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association had a report that will bother many of the “America’s #1 in Everything” crowd. It seems that the beer swilling, chain smoking Brits are healthier than their American cousins. More diabetes, more high blood pressure and more cancer. Maybe America is #1 after all.

What is significant about the study is the removal of race from the equation. America is a nation of great ethnic diversity and that has an effect on access to healthcare for reasons largely historic and mostly racist. This study looked at white, non-hispanics in the US between 55-64 years of age compared to Brits (still white despite some immigration) of the same age group. In other words, apples finally got compare to apples and America came out worse anyway. As Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting” asked, “How d’ya like them apples?”

The study did find that wealth and social class (much the same thing in the US, not quite the same thing in the UK) were big determinants of health. Simply, the toffs are better off. However, the American upper crust was about as healthy as the British proletariat. With the US spending $5,200 per capita per year on health care and the UK spending half that, the problem is not resources but their allocation.

Dr. Michael Marmot, an epidemiologist at University College London in England and co-author of the study, suggested that America is a financially less forgiving society. Since the 1970s, household income in the US hasn’t gone up except for the top quintile of the population, the healthiest. Meanwhile in the UK, incomes have improved almost across the board in the last 30 years. The AP asked a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, Robert Blendon, if he had any insight. “The opportunity to go both up and down the socioeconomic scale in America may create stress.” In other words, a welfare state safety net might be good for one's health. Dr. Marmot echoed this, “It’s not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place.”

Dr. Marmot asks an interesting question, “Everybody should be discussing it: Why isn’t the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?” Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home

Google
WWW Kensington Review







Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay Learn More