Basic Access

U.S. World’s Leading Healthcare Spender, But Care Still Lacking

The United States outspends every other country in the world on healthcare but gets only mediocre returns on the investment, AFP reported May 3. U.S. healthcare spending was about $8,000 per capita in 2008, higher than Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland. Among industrialized nations, Japan spent the [...]

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Four in 10 Americans See Finances Failing

Americans’ sense of financial stability has hit a new low, with 39 percent of adults saying that they lack the money they need to live comfortably, according to a new Gallup poll. In 2002, 75 percent of Americans said they currently had enough money to live comfortably, and that figure remained over 70 percent through [...]

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Back to Basics: Access to Life Essentials Improving in U.S.

More Americans have access to basic necessities of life this year compared to 2011, according to new data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, although access to food, shelter, healthcare and a safe neighborhood remains less common than it was in 2008, before the current economic downturn. The national basic-access score on the 1-100 index was [...]

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A Quarter of Americans Lacked Health Insurance Last Year

About one in four working-age Americans went without health insurance for at least some period of time in 2011, according to research from the Commonwealth Fund. Reuters reported April 19 that a survey of 2,100 people between the ages of 19 and 64 found that an estimated 48 million U.S. residents did not have healthcare [...]

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Want to Be Happy? Stay Married

Anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship can tell you it’s not always a bed of roses, but the grass isn’t often greener on the other side, according to new data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Married Americans have much better overall well-being scores (68.8 on a scale of 1-100) than those who [...]

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Link Between Obesity and Healthy Food Access Challenged

The theory that many poorer neighborhoods are “food deserts” with limited access to supermarkets and grocery stores — and that this drives up the obesity rate in those communities — may be flawed, a pair of recent studies suggests. In fact, poor neighborhood have nearly twice as many supermarkets and large groceries as wealthier neighborhoods, [...]

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Better Educated Americans Live Longer: Report

In the U.S., the better your education, the better your chances of living a full life, the New York Times reported April 3. In counties throughout the country, every year of post-secondary education lowers the risk of dying before age 75 (considered a premature death) by 16 percent, researchers from the University of Wisconsin determined [...]

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Is Your Neighborhood Making Your Kids Fat?

Where you live has a big impact on your child’s chances of becoming overweight or obese, a new study suggests. Children living in neighborhoods with the poorest nutrition and physical-activity environments have almost 16 percent higher rates of obesity than children in neighborhoods with the best food and fitness environments, Brian Saelens, Ph.D., of the [...]

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Americans Ate Less Healthy in 2011

Most Americans have access to affordable healthy foods, but the percentage of  U.S. residents eating healthy declined last year, according to data from the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index. Slightly fewer Americans reported eating healthy all day “yesterday,” according to the survey — about two of three did so — and the percentage of Americans who [...]

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Negotiate Your Way to Lower Medical Bills

As a rule, healthcare in America isn’t cheap. But you can save a substantial chunk of change on medical bills if you’re willing to take your doctor to the negotiating table, CNNMoney reported April 6. “The era of health insurance covering everything is disappearing,” says John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. [...]

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