Thursday, January 10, 2013

Bad health America

Capitalist apologists like to claim that America has the best health care in the world. This patriotic sentiment runs counter to innumerable studies that show Americans spend more on health care but don't get better health in return.

The latest example is a report, conducted jointly by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine  found that Americans "have a long-standing pattern of poorer health that is strikingly consistent and pervasive" over a person's lifetime. "Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are demonstrably unnecessary,” the report stated. Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries.

Steven Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, who chaired the panel that wrote the report, commented "I don't think people realize that their children are likely to live shorter lives than children in other countries,"

According to the report, the US ranked at or near the bottom in nine key areas of health: low birth weight; injuries and homicides; teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; HIV and AIDS; drug-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and general disability.

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