Health in America

This past week there was an article in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram comparing the health of middle class people in the US compared with people in the UK. The study indicated that those in the US have much higher rates of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease than people in the UK; this despite the fact that spending on health care is twice as high in the US as in the UK. The article stated that experts were unable to explain the study results.

This reminded me of the time Peter Jennings was puzzled about why there more people than ever in prison in the US, since crime was at an all-time low. It never occurred to a good liberal like Jennings that crime was down because more of the criminals were out of circulation.

It seems to me that diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease can be treated and controlled, but usually are not cured. Thus, if more people in the US have these conditions, then it is not surprizing that more money is spent on health care in the US. Another factor could be that, since socialized medicine in the UK rations health care, it is possible that a larger percentage of the population there have undiagnosed medical conditions. Another possibility is that, since the raw data were generated by each nation's governments, it is possible that there were significant differences in the protocols and methodologies used.