Costly diseases, many of them related to obesity and smoking, are more prevalent among aging Americans than their European peers and add as much as $100 billion to $150 billion a year in treatment costs to the U.S. healthcare tab, a new study says.
The study by researchers at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health found higher rates of several serious diseases -- including cancer, diabetes and heart disease -- among Americans 50 and older as compared with aging Europeans.
For example, heart disease was diagnosed in nearly twice as many Americans as Europeans 50 and older. More than 16% of American seniors had diagnosed diabetes, compared with about 11% of their European peers. And arthritis and cancer were more than twice as common among Americans as Europeans.
The study published on the Web today by the journal Health Affairs found that Americans were nearly twice as likely as Europeans to be obese (33.1% versus 17.1%), and they also were more likely to be current or former smokers (53% versus 43%).
"We expected to see differences between disease prevalence in the United States and Europe, but the extent of the differences is surprising," said lead author Kenneth Thorpe, a public health professor at Emory and former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Thorpe said the findings suggested that "we spend more on healthcare because we are, indeed, less healthy."
The study has implications for the continuing debate over healthcare reform and attempts to illustrate the economic consequences of lifestyle choices often viewed as intensely personal.
Does the Emory study mean that Americans are actually sicker than Europeans, or that their illnesses are more likely to be diagnosed and treated? Both, the authors said.
When it comes to cancer, the higher diagnosis rate appears to be due to more intensive screening in the U.S., they said. But higher rates of obesity-related diseases and conditions, such as high blood pressure, suggest Americans also are, indeed, sicker.
"I think the big difference is the doubling of obesity rates," Thorpe said.
"If you look at the doctor-diagnosed rates of diabetes and other chronic diseases related to obesity, it's just startling," he said. "It just jumped out at us when we looked at it."
