Sicker Than the English
Have you seen the news reports on recent research concluding that Americans are much sicker than people from England? This is despite the fact that “U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens”, according to the Yahoo News account of the comparison.
Released in the Journal of the American Medical Association, these results appear to be confounding the “experts.” A lot of possible contributing variables have been accounted for (wealth, ethnicity, education, etc.) and the English are still healthier than us, with lower rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease, and cancer!
Now, I’ve always believed that “health care” is a misnomer; it should be called “sickness care.” The medical profession’s role is primarily the treatment of disease, so if we want to know why we, as a nation, are sicker, methinks we better look at what makes us sick, not what we spend when we get sick. And what does make us so much sicker than the English?
Well, I suspect that it not a one-answer question, but I DO believe we should be looking at individuals’ basic health and wellness choices: diets, exercise patterns, use of nutritional supplements, exposure to toxic substances in daily life, and so on. I firmly believe that these things make a huge difference in many cases.
I’m no expert, but I’m not nearly as confounded as they appear to be. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that the U.S. lags behind England (and many other countries) in basic health and wellness practices. We reap what we sow, don’t you think?
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