Older Europeans Are Healthier Than Americans

In Europe, the L.A. Times reports, people over the age of 50 have significantly lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other health problems than do Americans. The Times directs us to a study conducted at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health that found that Americans were nearly twice as likely as Europeans to be obese (33.1 percent
versus 17.1 percent), and they also were more likely to be current or former
smokers (53 percent versus 43 percent). Wait, it gets worse, or at least more expensive: The paper points out that in 2004, the year of the data the Emory study examined, the U.S. spent
$6,102 per capita on healthcare — about twice that of the Netherlands
and Germany and nearly twice that of France.
Read more in the L.A. Times.
Read an abstract from the study in Health Affairs.