首页
登录
职称英语
[originaltext] AMERICA’s medical system has long seemed a poor bargain. Amer
[originaltext] AMERICA’s medical system has long seemed a poor bargain. Amer
游客
2023-12-29
25
管理
问题
AMERICA’s medical system has long seemed a poor bargain. Americans spend far more on health care than the inhabitants of other rich countries, but their life expectancy is below the wealthy world’s average. Annual medical costs, measured by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development using purchasing-power parities, which take account of price differences, amount to $5,635 per person in America compared with $2,231 in Britain. Yet an American’s life expectancy at birth is 77.2 years compared with 78.5 for a Briton.
Life expectancy, though, is a crude and indirect measure of health. For example, two factors contributing to America’s poor showing have nothing to do with the victim’s health. These are a high rate of road-accident mortality, and the highest homicide rate in the rich world. To overcome this deficiency, a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Michael Marmot, of University College, London, and his colleagues uses direct measures to compare the health of middle-aged Americans and Britons --and the results still favor the Limeys.
Strictly, the comparison was between Americans and the English. Scots, with their notoriously high rates of heart disease, were conveniently excluded by the choice of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing as the source Of the British data, as were the Welsh and the Northern Irish. With this caveat, Dr Marmot’s research revealed that people who are between 55 and 64 years of age are a lot sicker in America than they are in England. Diabetes is twice as common: 12.5% of Americans suffer from it, compared with 6.1% in England. Cancer is nearly twice as prevalent in America, while heart disease is half as high again.
America’s greater ethnic diversity is not the mason as why middle-aged Americans are so much sicker than their English counterparts, since the research excludes blacks and Latinos (in England, it excludes Asians and blacks, to make the populations comparable). Access to health care is an obvious suspect, because America, unlike other rich countries, does not have universal coverage. Official figures show that 16% of the population is uninsured. However, only 7% of the middle-aged Americans in the survey lacked health insurance, while within the top third by income, access was almost universal. Yet such people were generally sicker than the top third of the English group. Insurance gaps are thus not to blame for Americans’ poorer health.
Nor are unhealthy lifestyles the main culprit, say the researchers. Smoking rates among this age group are slightly higher in England. Obesity is more common in America, but heavy drinking is more widespread in England. Altogether, these risk factors explain very little of the health disparity between the two countries. For example, they account for less than a fifth of the difference in diabetes.
The study thus establishes that middle-aged Americans are much sicker than their English counterparts without being able to pinpoint why. One possibility is that ill health in America reflects obesity in the past as well as today. In 1980, 15% of Americans were already obese compared with 7% of Britons. England might, thus, simply be lagging behind America in the medical impact of prolonged obesity.
选项
A、Traffic accident.
B、Homicide rate.
C、Inadequate access to the Medical Insurance by the Americans.
D、Both A and
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3316688.html
相关试题推荐
Kodak’sbankruptcywasasadstoryforaleadingAmericancorporationthatpione
Medicalstudiesareprovidingincreasingevidencethatalternativetherapiesare
ItisablazingmorninginthePermianbasin,inwestTexas,America’smostp
ItisablazingmorninginthePermianbasin,inwestTexas,America’smostp
ItisablazingmorninginthePermianbasin,inwestTexas,America’smostp
ItisablazingmorninginthePermianbasin,inwestTexas,America’smostp
ItisablazingmorninginthePermianbasin,inwestTexas,America’smostp
IfyouwanttounderstandwhatlifeexpectancyisdecreasinginAmerica,thesta
TheevidencethatsuchrepressiontookplaceinthewritingofAmericanhistory
TheAmericanAcademyofPediatrics(AAP)justreleaseditsupdatedguidelines
随机试题
Childrenmodelthemselveslargelyontheirparents.Theydosomainlythroug
男,68岁,糖尿病患者,突发高热、寒战、右胸痛,次日咳痰,为黄脓性带血丝,量多。
关于后牙固定桥桥体验面设计,错误的是A.适当降低非功能尖斜度 B.恢复缺失牙原
根据《旅游安全管理暂行办法》规定,对旅游企业安全管理工作负第一位责任的是( )
主要通过颈动脉窦反射性兴奋呼吸中枢的药物是A.洛贝林 B.咖啡因 C.戊四氮
平地搬运时伤员头部在前,上楼、下楼、下坡时头部在下,搬运中应严密观察伤员,防止伤
在公共场合演讲,有的人长篇大论,滔滔不绝;有的人则把自己的意思浓缩成一句话,而这
经典话剧《雷雨》在北京人艺进行新一轮演出时,一场低票价、针对大中学生的公益场遭遇
根据葛氏法则,属于买入信号的有()。A:平均线从下降开始走平,股价从下上穿平均线
施工临时用水需求计划编制的主要根据是()等因素。A.工程数量 B.职工数量
最新回复
(
0
)