Health
The six states of New England ranked within the top thirteen "healthiest states" of the U.S. in 2007. In 2008, they all placed within the top eleven states. New England also had the largest proportion of its population covered by health insurance.
For 2006, four states in the region, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, joined 12 others nationwide, where the number of deaths caused by drugs had overtaken traffic fatalities. This was due in part to declining traffic fatalities, and in part to increased deaths caused by prescription drugs.
In comparing national obesity rates by state, four of the six lowest obesity states were Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island. New Hampshire and Maine had the 15th and 18th lowest obesity rates, making New England the least overweight part of the U.S.
In 2008, three of New England's states had the least number of uninsured motorists (out of the top five states); Massachusetts – 1%, Maine – 4%, and Vermont – 6%.
In 2006, Massachusetts adopted health care reform that requires nearly all state residents obtain health insurance, which served as an important model for the federal 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Nursing home care can be expensive in the region. A private room in Connecticut averaged $125,925 annually. A one-bedroom in an assisted living facility averaged $55,137 in Massachusetts. Both are national highs.
Read more about this topic: New England
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“We have two kinds of “conference.” One is that to which the office boy refers when he tells the applicant for a job that Mr. Blevitch is “in conference.” This means that Mr. Blevitch is in good health and reading the paper, but otherwise unoccupied. The other type of “conference” is bona fide in so far as it implies that three or four men are talking together in one room, and don’t want to be disturbed.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Woman ... cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appear something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)