U.S. life expectancy lags behind other countries

[EtobicokeFA]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/08/13/life.expectancy.ap/index.html

The good news according to this article is that we are still living longer than ever before.

The bad news is that compared to the rest of the world we rank at number 42nd, when it comes to life expectancy.

Here a couple of great paragraphs.

Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

Wow, i looks like that they might be on the right idea, however they then followed it with this!

But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."


Among the other factors:


-Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.


-"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

I don't think that we have to guess which issue that they are going to mostly focus on do we?

 

[Jon Blaze]