Americans sicker than Canadians

Life stye anyone. Chasing after money all the time
may be dangerous to your health.

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Study: Americans sicker than Canadians

Co-author calls national health insurance a factor

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- 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.

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.

Woolhandler said her findings were different in at least one important
respect: In the Canadian study, insured Americans and Canadians had
about the same rates of disease. It was the uninsured Americans who
made the overall U.S. figures worse, she said.

The study, released Tuesday, is being published in the American Journal
of Public Health. It is based on a telephone survey of about 3,500
Canadians and 5,200 U.S. residents in 2002-03. Those surveyed were 18
or older.

The results are based on what those surveyed said about their health.
In contrast, the researchers in the American-English study surveyed
participants and also examined people and conducted laboratory tests on
them.

The new study found that 6.7 percent of Americans and 4.7 percent of
Canadians reported having diabetes; 18.3 percent and 13.9 percent,
respectively, reported having high blood pressure; and 17.9 percent and
16.0 percent said they had arthritis.

The Americans also reported more heart disease and major depression,
but those difference were too small to be statistically significant.

About 21 percent of Americans said they were obese, compared with 15
percent of Canadians. And about 13.5 percent of the Americans admitted
to a sedentary lifestyle, versus 6.5 percent of Canadians. However,
more Canadians were smokers -- 19 percent, compared with about 17
percent of Americans.

About 42 percent of the Americans rated their quality of health care as
excellent, while 39 percent of Canadians did.

Also, 92 percent of American women said they had a Pap test within the
last five years, while 83 percent of Canadian women had. But Canadians
have lower death rates from cervical cancer. "It's a little hard to
interpret," Woolhandler said.

One more plus for the Americans: Fewer than 1 percent said they were
unable to get needed care because of long waits, compared with 3.5
percent of Canadians.

However, about 80 percent of Americans had a regular doctor, while 85
percent of Canadians did. And nearly twice as many Americans said there
were medicines they needed but couldn't afford (9.9 percent versus 5.1
percent).

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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