Wow, it amazes me that as one of the world's wealthiest industrialized nations, America is currently facing such a huge health epidemic among its citizens. Paul Krugman says that Americans, "spend much more per person on health care than any other nation, yet we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality" (2006, para. 2). Compared other modernized nations (Canada, Japan, and most of Europe) America ranks very low in health of its citizens. For example, "middle-age Americans are twice as likely to suffer from diabetes as their English counterparts," says Krugman. A fact that is now baffling researchers who discovered the statistics. Those researchers have come to a conlusion that "being American seems to damage your health."
This was news to me. I knew Americans in general had a poor diet which led to high obesity rates and a myriad of other healthcare issues, but I didn't realize it was pretty much only us scoring this badly.
I think Krugman makes a good point to address the average American's work schedule. Noting that full-time American workers average 46 weeks a year versus their counterparts oversees working only 41. Krugman makes a point to mention that this added stress could be a major reason Americans are having so many problems with their health.
BUT most importantly (and I think this needs more research) is the way healthcare is conducted in the United States. Krugman mention this as well in his article. Healthcare providers in the United States are out to make as much money as they can, they are businesses after all and rely on profits to succeed and grow. Now, the way that healthcare providers make money is by treating sick people. So I would say that their goal is to treat as many sick people as they possibly can.
My point is that if an American doctor had a cure to your disease and had the option to treat the symptoms or the cause of the disease he/she would choose to treat the symptoms. This way you would feel better for a while, but that you would come back, needing their services again. I think this is why Americans are so sick all the time, because of the billion dollar a year healthcare industry.
Source:
Paul Krugman, “Our Sick Society,” NYT, May 5, 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=0)
You did a great job in this post analyzing the reading from Krugman as well as arguing a thesis. Perhaps you might want to explore this further as a claim to try to support in an essay?
ReplyDeleteThis article also gave me a shock, I thought that all countries had a similar rate of working as well as health issues (such as obesity). I had no idea that America was on its own with the crazy sleep starved society. I also like the point you made about the billion dollar healthcare industry, stuff like this makes we wonder if America is really all it's cracked up to be.
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