The smoking rate among men in Japan is nearly twice that of the U.S. yet people in Japan live on average 4 years longer.

Maybe the biggest contributor to healthcare costs in the US is the fact that we tend to need more of it than anybody else, and are in fact sicker. We are the most successful nation on earth, so I've got a hard time believing it has anything to do with a lack of effort. You can't tell me someone as driven and talented as Oprah lacks willpower to stay thin.

Whatever this trend is in the US it's more dangerous to our health than smoking. A chain smoking lazy ass Greek is more likely to outlive us, and at a mere fraction of the cost.

Because in america doctors have to worry about getting sued for every piss ant thing. Not to mention your goverment has a lovely habbit of wrapping 2cent items in $1000 bucks of red tape.

If i want to go to the doctor here, i flash him my medicare card and let my taxes do the hard work for me......... having said that i seldom gto a doctor. A head cold is nothing a bit of pipeweed cant fix :)

I don't think lawsuits and red tape explain why a chain smoking Greeks tends to outlive us.

Ah sorry i thought you were griping about the cost not the age.

I seldom buy into statistics like that unless it comes from census data. Im pretty sure if you took a real accounting of everyone on the planet it would be relatively the same.

statistics usual mask an agenda.


My grandmother has 5 siblings, each of them is as healthy as.
However my grandmother has spent the better part of 5 years in hospital/nursing home ...... why?

Is there a reason? not really. Just the way it goes.

Africa is probably the exception......

The stress associated with the high costs of maintaining our health is killing us.

Imagine how high those costs would go if we did live longer!

Does this statistic count the legal population of the US, not the actual?

It would drop our per capita number considerably...

How different do you think the two figures are, GA? How many illegals do you think there are? In order for the USA to be near the trend line on the second graph, it would require there to be about 300 million illegals in addition to the 300 million legal residents.

For spending to be about $10,000 per capita, you'd be looking at about 150 million illegals.

I know that you think there are a lot, but 150 million?

Illegals are counted/estimated in the census.

I suspect the charts are suggesting more is going on than just the usual aspects we discuss. Japan and Switzerland are very expensive countries to live in. How the heck does Japan spend 2/5ths what we do and smoke twice as much? The extreme outlier of the US in these charts is stunning.

Here's a strange piece http://www.jacn.org/cgi/reprint/18/3/207.pdf, a review of dietary intakes in-between 1965-1995 (I tried but couldn't find this one updated to the present). It shows in those 30 years that people ate less and decreased the % of calories from fat by a stunning 10%. So it appears that the public has achieved much of what public health officials have recommended, namely the mantra to eat less fat. Yet here we are in 2011 and obesity and type II diabetes are barreling ahead. I can assure you that people hate being obese. What we get in this society is a blame the victim mentality in regards to health.

You can't tell me some smoking laid back Greek somehow has the willpower Americans simply lack. Heck the reductions in smoking in the US just go to show the effort with which Americans will follow their public health messaging.

I think there's plenty of evidence that dietary guidlines are suboptimal to outright wrong and dangerous. Problem is once governmental agencies or affiliates thereof have taken a public stand it's kind of hard to reverse. They started though.

Fat fills you up -- and is necessary for health. A friend of mine was severely ill because she cut ALL fat out of her diet.

Carbohydrates are the real culprit. They are not nutritionally needed (except for energy) and do not fill you up. They also cause diabetes.

I have this "discussion" with my wife all the time, but she still buys "no fat" or "low fat" with a feeling that she is doing the right thing.

Ray Jay wrote:I have this "discussion" with my wife all the time, but she still buys "no fat" or "low fat" with a feeling that she is doing the right thing.

Just put sugar cubes in the apropriate ammount next to the low fat product and you'll win that argument right quick. Worked with my girlfriend and now i can eat my meat in peace too :D

neal

suspect the charts are suggesting more is going on than just the usual aspects we discuss

What are the usual suspects?
Universal socialized health care or health insurance versus the American system.
(If the US is an outlier in your charts, its also an outlier in this feature of society)
The quality and quantity of food intake. Particularly fast food, and snack food. )
General activity levels of populace.
What else is there?

There are different elements of society that affect why people eat the way they do and why there are varying levels of activity. But if you factor out the complexities of how we arrive at the diet we take in, and the exercise we put out it comes down to a pretty simple three part problem.
All three are long term situations that have long lasting effects on the numbers you've selected as indicators. You aren't going to change the diet of Americans quickly, although its apparent when Wal-Mart starts to lead the charge that there will be significant attempts at change. You aren't going to change their exercise and activity levels over night, although this could be the easiest of the three factors to fix. And the health care system is going to take years of reform to get to where it can compete with other systems in terms of delivering overall efficiency and effectiveness.
There is one element that no ones entered into, I'm not sure its a real factor, but perhaps it is...
Americans seem to have a fetish for life. By that I mean, many societies seem to deal with end of life issues better. There seems to be an acceptance of death as a part of life, and the heroic battles to add a few more months or weeks of heavily medicated existence onto some ones life doesn't seem to be pursued with the same vigor as in America. I know the last few years of most peoples lives is usually where the majority of their use of the health care system resides.... In the US it seems to go on to a greater extent as heroic efforts are often made when in other societies its more a "make the end as comfortable and dignified as possible

Ray Jay wrote:Fat fills you up -- and is necessary for health. A friend of mine was severely ill because she cut ALL fat out of her diet.

Carbohydrates are the real culprit. They are not nutritionally needed (except for energy) and do not fill you up. They also cause diabetes.

I have this "discussion" with my wife all the time, but she still buys "no fat" or "low fat" with a feeling that she is doing the right thing.

The mantra to reduce fat and avoid saturated fat is one of the sacredest of cows in the US. And maybe it is killing us as a result. You are right there's no way to have type II diabetes without carbs and there's virtually no way to be obese without carbs. Weight gain requires the release of insulin to trigger the storage of energy, carbs are necessary to release insulin, fats don't cause the release of insulin. In fact the reason people rotate their insulin injection sites is so that they don't get unsightly mounds of fat in one spot.

1 in 4 Americans has metabolic syndrome which means obesity and type II diabetes will continue to sky rocket. People with this condition are told to eat less fat, and since you can't really eat much more protein without blowing out your kidneys that means you eat more carbs. Now why would our public health guidelines encourage people to eat more carbs if they're headed toward type II diabetes. As RJ said before you can't have type II diabetes without carbs.

Not to mention the fact that as people reduce the fat in their diet the more unsatisfactory their diet becomes which in the long term is going to push them towards the more dangerous carbs.

As shown earlier Americans have reduced their fat intake by 10% as recommended, they have also quit smoking in droves, yet we're no better off than Cubans! What about increasing rates of arthritis, autism, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc?

Why blame the victim, because there's some Greek bumpkin out there smoking, drinking, and eating lamb chops, and he's going to outlive you with his Mediteranean diet.

Some Greek cuisine wisdom

rickyp wrote:Americans seem to have a fetish for life. By that I mean, many societies seem to deal with end of life issues better. There seems to be an acceptance of death as a part of life, and the heroic battles to add a few more months or weeks of heavily medicated existence onto some ones life doesn't seem to be pursued with the same vigor as in America. I know the last few years of most peoples lives is usually where the majority of their use of the health care system resides.... In the US it seems to go on to a greater extent as heroic efforts are often made when in other societies its more a "make the end as comfortable and dignified as possible

Ricky, I mean this as a serious question and not snarky but could it be artifact of our healthcare delivery system? Because healthcare cost are hidden, i.e. paid mostly by employers so premium increases are not see, people have an expectation of higher coverage; whereas, most other countries can not really hide increased costs because they are based on tax increases?

archduke

Ricky, I mean this as a serious question and not snarky but could it be artifact of our healthcare delivery system? Because healthcare cost are hidden, i.e. paid mostly by employers so premium increases are not see, people have an expectation of higher coverage; whereas, most other countries can not really hide increased costs because they are based on tax increases

You think the observation has merit? I wasn't sure. It is perhaps a reflection of the media coverage to end of life issues like Shiavo, and I wasn't sure I wasn't over stating.
In Canada and I think other countries the funding for health insurance now comes out of general revenues. Therefore there's no constant reminder of the cost of health care, like a seperate tax collection might have. . If taxes go up it could just be blamed on "everything" as on health care. (Although admittedly health care costs are the #1 tax driver and get a lot of media attention.
On the other hand, the concept that "we all pay for this" might make people generally more aware of over use . Whereas employees figure it doesn't really directly affect them?
So, maybe theres a contribution to the attitude .
In that case score another one for socialized medicine?!