Brits healthier than Americans? Tom Smith

This study says so, but I don’t believe it for a minute.  The data was generated by self-reporting, “Do you have any sort of cancer?” and so forth.  Where the gap in quality of medical care is as great as it it between the US and the UK, it is probably many Brits have diseases they don’t know they have, which would be picked up by doctors in the US.  To do this sort of study, I think would you have to actually examine patients, which would be expensive, but not that difficult to do.  Also, what do actualy mortality statistics say?  It is pretty hard to argue that someone who has died (by natural causes) was healthy.  At age 40, do Brits have a longer life expectancy than Yanks?  I doubt it very much. Moreover, there are cultural differences.  Apparently, there is some vestige of the stiff upper lip left.  It is bad form to complain about illness in the UK, and cheerful stoicism is one’s moral duty, and comes in very handy, I can tell you, in dealing the the National Health Service.  Americans, on the other hand, love to complain