Health Care Website and Blog

Appeal-Democrat, the Sutter-Yuba counties (California) newpaper, says that universal healthcare sounds good, but it is utopian and it will bankrupt our country. An editorial published today says that the only way for America to reduce its healthcare costs is for the government to get less and not more involved in healthcare.

Incidentally, California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a campaigner for universal healthcare, but his $14.9 billion universal healthcare plan failed to pass the state legislature last year.

In countries like Britain and much of Europe, however, almost universal, publicly-funded healthcare has been a fact for more than half a century. And that is why, in spite of their economies being in almost as bad a shape as ours, there is less of sheer human suffering.

One in five American 4-year olds is obese, according to a study by scholars in Ohio State and Temple Universities. These children are more likely to be obese as adults and suffer from health problems ranging from childhood diabetes to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Obesity rates have been increasing steadily in the United States - 30 years ago, only 5-7% of preschools were obese. The figure was 18% according to a 2001 survey, and it shows no sign of coming down.

Poorer children, who eat less varieties of foods and eat cheaper and more high-calorie food, are more likely to be obese than children of well-off families. And Hispanic children (22%) and African American children (21%) are more likely to be obese than white children (16%).