Compared to people in other middle- and high-income countries, Americans die young — and sometimes needlessly due to inadequate access to health care. A report from the Commonwealth Fund surveyed the 50 states and concluded:

The best health care was in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Washington, where average life expectancy is 80 to 81. That's still lower than in most comparable countries.

The worst health care is in Mississippi and West Virginia, where life expectancy is under 75, lower than in Mexico, which has the lowest life expectancy among middle- and high-income countries.

Even Grand Theft Auto?

A study of nearly 2,000 children found that those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more performed better on cognitive skills tests involving impulse control and working memory compared to children who had never played video games.

They also noted the differences in cognitive function observed between the two groups was accompanied by differences in brain activity. Functional MRI brain imaging analyses found that video game-playing children showed higher brain activity in regions of the brain associated with attention and memory than did those who never played. The children also showed more brain activity in frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks, and less brain activity in brain regions related to vision.

Get Me That, Stat!

Less than one-quarter of Americans working in the private sector have paid sick leave. But in states that mandated paid sick leave during the pandemic, that mandate resulted in nearly a 6% decline in visits to emergency departments.

The biggest drops came from Medicaid patients, with big declines in visits that could be handled in primary care: for adults, dental problems, mental health issues and substance use disorder; for kids, asthma.

Stories for the Waiting Room

Researchers have developed a simple blood test that may help predict who is likely to die and who might survive with severe disability after a traumatic brain injury. The test looks for protein biomarkers in certain brain cells that help gauge structural brain damage.

The tests aren't therapeutic, said the researchers, but they may "help us be a little bit more definitive in speaking with families of the patients and the patients."

Doc Talk

Infiltrate: an abnormal substance in a tissue or organ, such as a cancer cell

Phobia of the Week

Haphephobia: fear of being touched

Never Say 'Diet'

The Major League Eating record for whole turkey is 9.35 pounds in 10 minutes, held by Joey Chestnut. Chestnut obviously gobbled his food.

Food for Thought

Actually, this item is more about thinking about food than what's in it. A Rutgers University study found that when people are asked to write about how they feel after a meal, the exercise can lead to healthier eating due to greater awareness of what writers are eating and how it makes them feel afterward.

Best Medicine

Caller: "Is this the urology office?"

Receptionist: "Yes, can you hold?"

Observation

"Let's have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle." — Earl Blumenauer

Medical History

This week in 1846, the word "anesthesia" was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a letter to William Thomas Green Morton, the surgeon who gave the first public demonstration of the pain-killing effects of ether. Anesthesia is formed by the prefix (an-), meaning "without" or absence of" and the Greek root term (-esthesia-), meaning "sensation."

Med School

Q: What is the appendix attached to in the human body?

A: The appendix is closed at one end and attached at the other end to the cecum, the pouch-like beginning of the large intestine into which the small intestine empties its contents. More generally, nobody really needs to be "attached" to their appendix, which appears to serve no function. Many believe it is an evolutionary remnant of our predecessors.

Epitaphs

"Ima Ghost" — Headstone of Ima Ghost (1804-1844). Probably a harder name to live with than to die by.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: mzgiaconte at Pixabay