In a survey of chronically ill adults in 8 affluent countries, US patients were the most likely to forego care due to high costs and rate their care as inefficient and error prone.

This according to Cathy Schoen and her team, who surveyed 7,500 adults chosen at random in France, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US. The study was published in Health Affairs.

Participants had at least one chronic illness such as arthritis, diabetes or heart disease. They had rated their health as fair or poor, or reported that they had recently sustained a major illness, undergone major surgery or required hospitalization.

Overall, US patients viewed their health system more negatively than any other country. One-third said it ought to be rebuilt from the ground up and only one-fifth said it worked well. Dutch patients viewed their system most positively, followed by the British, French and Canadians.

54% of Americans reported at least one cost-related access problem in the previous year, such as skipping medication doses, not filling prescriptions and not seeing a physician during an illness. This was highest among the 8 countries.

Only 7% of Dutch participants reported that costs were a barrier to accessing medical services.

41% of Americans indicated they incurred at least $1,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses in the last year. That happened to just 5% of French and 4% of British respondents.

One third of US respondents reported experiencing a medical error, receiving an incorrect medication or dosage, delays receiving test results or receiving incorrect test results. That was higher than any other country.

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Unhappy people spend 30% more time watching TV, according to a study published in the December issue of Social Indicators Research.

To reach this conclusion, John P. Robinson and Steven Martin at the University of Maryland combined data from specially designed personal diaries with results from the General Social Survey which contains public opinion data from 45,000 adults.

In the analysis, people describing themselves as not too happy watched nearly 6 hours more TV per week than people in the happiest cohort. Very happy people spent just under 19 hours watching the tube, while the not too happy group spent 25 hours watching television.

These findings persisted even after controlling for gender, marital status, race, income, education and age.

The research does not prove that TV causes people to fret, the authors caution. “It could be that watching television makes you unhappy, but there is also the question of whether people who are unhappy turn to television as a way to ward off their unhappiness,” Robinson told the Washington Post.

Thankfully for everybody except perhaps television marketers, only 11% of participants described themselves as not too happy. By contrast 55% were somewhat happy and 33% said they were very happy.

The average US adult has nearly 40 hours of free time, so happy or not we spend approximately half our free time in front of a TV.

Respondents were asked to rate the activities they enjoyed the most. The top 6 were sex, playing sports, playing or reading with children, religious/church activities, sleep and meals out. Watching TV was rated 12th, ahead of exercise and work.

The least enjoyed activities were yard work, house cleaning, laundry, visiting the doctor and car repair.

Autumn babies are more likely to develop asthma because they are exposed to lots of flu and cold viruses at a bad time, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Pingsheng Wu and colleagues at Vanderbilt reached this conclusion after examining Medicaid claims from 95,000 Tennessee children born between 1995-2000.

Infants born 4 months before the peak of the winter virus season had a 29% higher risk of developing asthma than those born 12 months before the peak.

Seasonal birth risk was at least as powerful an asthma predictor as established risk factors like maternal history of asthma, exposure to cigarette smoke, birth weight, gender, race, and the presence of siblings, all of which were controlled for in this study.

The scientists speculate that the seasonal birth link is mediated by a period of mild immune susceptibility that normally occurs 4 months after birth. This is the time when the infant’s stock of protective maternal antibodies has just about disappeared, and its ability to manufacture antibodies on its own remains somewhat limited.

It also may be that viral respiratory infections at this age (which are more common in winter) are more likely to impact airway reactivity and immune responsiveness in later life, according to the scientists.

The observation of a seasonal birth link to asthma, compelling though it may be, does little to settle the debate about whether early infections cause asthma or represent a sign of asthma predisposition, according to Renato Stein, who wrote an accompanying editorial.

“This is a controversial issue because children who attend daycare centers, and thus who are more exposed to recurrent respiratory infections, have been shown to have less asthma later in life,” Dr. Stein wrote.