ATLANTA – You can add Canada to the list of nations that are healthier than the United States of America. Americans are 42 per cent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32 per cent more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12 per cent more likely to have arthritis, Harvard Medical School researchers found. That is according to a survey in which American and Canadian adults were asked over the telephone about their health. The study comes less than a month after other researchers reported that middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England. ‘We’re really falling behind other nations,’ said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the Canadian study. Canada’s national health insurance program is at least part of the reason for the differences found in the study, Dr. Woolhandler said. Universal coverage makes it easier for more Canadians to get disease-preventing health services, she said. James Smith, a RAND Corp. researcher who co-authored the American-English study, disagreed. His research found that England’s national health insurance program did not explain the difference in disease rates, because even Americans with insurance were in worse health. ‘To me, that’s unlikely,’ […]