Being American Is Bad for Your Health | The Smirking Chimp

Being American Is Bad for Your Health | The Smirking Chimp:

'via Blog this'"...Our newborns are less likely to reach their first birthday, or their fifth birthday. Our adolescents die at higher rates from car crashes and homicides, and they have the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections. Americans have the highest incidence of AIDS, the highest obesity rates, the highest diabetes rates among adults 20 and older, the highest rates of chronic lung disease and heart disease and drug-related deaths.  

"...the nation's large population of recent immigrants is generally in better health than native-born Americans."

 The right loves to rail against "socialized medicine," but on health outcomes, the other guys win. We loves us our firearms, and we don't much like wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets.

In America, the best predictor of good or bad health is the income level of your zip code.  

...less public transportation, walking and cycling; more cars and car accidents; less access to fresh produce; more marketing and bigger portions of bad food.  Since the 1980s, in the sunny name of "free enterprise," there's been a ferocious, ideologically driven effort to demonize government, roll back regulations, privatize the safety net, stigmatize public assistance, gut public investment, weaken consumer protection, consolidate corporate power, delegitimize science, condemn anti-poverty efforts as "class warfare" and entrust public health to the tender mercies of the marketplace. 

...gun violence has been fueled by anti-government paranoia stoked by the gun manufacturers' lobby, the NRA. The spike in consumption of high-fructose corn syrup has been driven by the food industry's business decisions and its political (i.e., financial) clout. In the name of fiscal conservatism, plutocrats push for cuts in discretionary expenditures on maternal health, early childhood education, social services and public transportation. The same tactic that once prolonged tobacco's death grip -- the confection of a phony scientific "controversy" -- now undermines efforts to combat climate change, which is as big a danger to public health as any "