EDITORIAL – Americans can’t buy good health

Biggie had it right: Mo’ money, mo’ problems.

A new study comparing white Americans and… Biggie had it right: Mo’ money, mo’ problems.

A new study comparing white Americans and their English counterparts found that middle-age Americans are far less healthy. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes, heart attacks and lung disease are more prevalent in Americans than the British, the study indicated.

Spending twice as much as the British government on health care just isn’t paying off for Americans. It’s important to note, however, that the British health-care system is socialized, offering universal health care to all of its citizens at little or no cost. The privatized U.S. system is more expensive for citizens who have to pay into it.

Still, experts say that differences in health care aren’t to blame.

Dr. Michael Marmot, a co-author of the study, believes that poor choices and external stress are at fault.

“It’s not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place,” Marmot said.

In the study, wealthier Americans’ health more closely resembles that of poorer English. We can conclude that wealthier Americans are choosing to lead a less healthy lifestyle, while low-income people don’t have the resources to make that choice.

So why do Americans think that they can afford to take chances on their health?

Over-medication and self-diagnosis often replace more effective treatment. Taking medicine to reduce your cholesterol level isn’t going to help if you don’t supplement it with diet and exercise. A change in lifestyle is harder than popping a pill or two every day for many Americans.

The study also concludes that smoking rates are similar in both countries, while Britons have a higher rate of heavy drinking and Americans are more obese.

The U.S. ranks somewhere behind two dozen other industrialized countries in life expectancy. The richest country in the world should have the healthiest people. Apparently the wealth we’ve accumulated has afforded us so much excess that it’s made us sick. We can afford more excess and more medicine to fix the problems that occur from the excess.

Stress, too, plays into Americans’ overall sickness. There is more pressure on Americans to live the “American Dream.” It’s very possible for people to transcend the socioeconomic scale in their lifetime and apparently it’s making us crazy. Americans work longer hours under more stressful conditions. If we lose our jobs, we probably lose our health insurance.

The English system puts less stress on its employees and they are pretty much guaranteed health insurance, regardless of their employment status. English workers have also experienced more of an income gain in the past thirty years than Americans.

So what are we to do? Obviously popping pills isn’t helping. Neither is spending more money on health care.

It’s time for Americans to be more proactive about their health, depending less on external agents to fix problems for us. A change in lifestyle is the best way to go for many Americans, and it’s really the only good fix for many problems that we’ve masked with medication.

Apparently money can’t buy everything, even in America.