Marshall Brain's Blog

A new study finds that Americans are much sicker than the English, but why is unclear. This despite the fact that America spends approximately 2.5 times more money per person on health care.

See:

• American Illness Mystery - CNN video (probably will be available for only a few days before becoming "for-pay")
  

• Paul Krugman: Our Sick Society

From the Krugman article: "Is being an American bad for your health? That's the apparent implication of a study just published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. It's not news that something is very wrong with the state of America's health. International comparisons show that the United States has achieved a sort of inverse miracle: we spend much more per person on health care than any other nation, yet we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, Japan and most of Europe. But it isn't clear exactly what causes this stunningly poor performance."

The British smoke more than Americans. They drink more. Yet there is this remarkable statistic: "Americans are so much sicker that the richest third of Americans is in worse health than the poorest third of the English."

The key factor may be stress. Both Krugman and CNN point out this: "Full-time American workers work, on average, about 46 weeks per year; full-time British, French and German workers work only 41 weeks a year. I've pointed out in the past that our workaholic economy is actually more destructive of the "family values" we claim to honor than the European economies in which regulations and union power have led to shorter working hours. Maybe overwork, together with the stress of living in an economy with a minimal social safety net, damages our health as well as our families."

Something to think about.