Canadians Healthier Than Americans

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Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 31 May 2006 - 8:00 PDT

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A Harvard Medical School survey has found that Canadians are healthier than Americans, have better health-care access than Americans and are generally more satisfied with their medical services than their southern neighbours.

Even though some Canadians complain about having to wait for operations, when their universal cover is compared to America's patchy services where tens of millions of people have no cover at all, America's overall medical services are seen as inferior Canada's.

Canadians, per head, spend much less than Americans do on health, and end up receiving much more and much better health care - Canadians are also enjoying far better health.

Here are some comparisons

-- 20.7% of Americans are obese
-- 15.3% of Canadians are obese

Incidence of diabetes in adults is 50% higher in America than Canada

-- 13.6% of Americans do no exercise at all
-- 6.5% of Canadians do no exercise at all

-- Even though 19% of Canadians are regular smokers compared to USA's 16.8%, the USA has double the percentage of people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

-- 79% of Americans have a family doctor
-- 85% of Canadians have a family doctor

-- 10% of Americans say they cannot pay for needed medication
-- 5.1% of Canadians say they cannot pay for needed medication

-- 13.2% of Americans say they have unmet health needs
-- 10.7% of Canadians say they have unmet health needs
Canadians say this is due to wait times. Most of the Americans say this is due to not being able to get the care at all. The most common barrier to access in the USA is money. The most common barrier to access in Canada is the time you have to wait to get the treatment.

-- Life expectancy in Canada is three years longer than in the USA.

The USA, which was recently compared to Great Britain in a study, also came out much worse in nearly all counts. And Great Britain usually fares badly against its European Union neighbours! This report even found that the lower classes in England enjoy better levels of health and general health care than the upper-middle classes in the USA.

Another study found that among Americans who do have access to medical care, dissatisfaction levels are much higher than in other developed nations. Click here to read about it. Americans are more likely to be at the receiving end of medical errors than patients in other countries.

Per head, Americans spend twice as much as the British or Canadians do each year on health. This leads many people to two questions:

1. Why are Americans so much less healthy than people in other developed nations?
2. Why are American health care services so poor when compared to other developed nations?

The answer to those two questions most definitely is not 'lack of money'.

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today