ATLANTA - You can add Canadians to the list of foreigners who are healthier than Americans. Americans are 42 percent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12 percent more likely to have arthritis, Harvard Medical School researchers found. That is according to a survey in which American and Canadian adults were asked over the telephone about their health.
The study comes less than a month after other researchers reported that middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England.
"We're really falling behind other nations," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the Canadian study.
Canada's national health insurance program is at least part of the reason for the differences found in the study, Woolhandler said. Universal coverage makes it easier for more Canadians to get disease-preventing health services, she said.
As the article indicates, this study would seem to support the idea that citizens living in a society with "free" universal health care is healthier than a society without it. Yet, as a co-author of the study indicates that is not necessarily the case:
James Smith, a RAND Corp. researcher who co-authored the American-English study, disagreed. His research found that England's national health insurance program did not explain the difference in disease rates, because even Americans with insurance were in worse health.
"To me, that's unlikely," he said of the idea that universal coverage explains international differences.
It seems to me that a lot of this has to do with societal differences more than anything else. Americans are a fast food culture, and we are - generally speaking - not as active in our private lives as our international counterparts. In places like Great Britain and Canada certain types of outdoor recreation such as walks, hiking and bicycling are ingrained in the culture. That isn't true of America.
But whatever the reasons for the disparity in the average health between Americans and Canadians, they certainly aren't cause for America to abandon its proud tradition of individualism. If anything it is a reason to cling to it. Making the collective (read: the tax payers) responsible for the health care of Americans citizens as opposed to the individual citizens themselves would only lead to those citizens taking even worse care of themselves than they do now.
Think of car maintenance, for a moment. If you were given an unlimited supply of free auto care would you bother to check the oil in your vehicle? Would you drive it with care? Or would you just drive it until something went wrong and then take it in to fix it? I know that's what I would probably do, and that's what people would be inclined to do with their bodies too.
There is also the question of why citizens who do take good care of their health should be responsible for the medical bills of those who do not. I love America, but the fact that the people of this country spend a little too much time at McDonald's is undeniable. Now I don't really care what people choose to eat or how they choose to live their lives in terms of health choices, but I will care if I - as a tax payer - am forced to pay for those choices.