An Unfair Shot

Healthcare Without Families

In this January's State of the Union address, President Obama spent a little time lauding the effects of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. "[I]n the past year alone," he stated, "about ten million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage." The president also discussed "middle-class economics"—as he put it, "the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules." It's a system, he says, that means "helping folks afford child care, college, health care" and so on.

Of course, if the president—and Congress—were really serious about everyone "getting their fair shot" when it came to health, they would focus their efforts on the circumstances that surround good health. And as it turns out, the natural family is precisely what the doctor ordered.

Decades of research demonstrate that marriage serves to protect the health of both spouses. So great is this advantage that in a recent study into cancer survival rates, Oslo researchers opened by establishing some context: "all-cause mortality rates are higher among the unmarried, especially the never married, than among the married" (Kradval and Syse, BMC Public Health, 2011). Married men and women tend to have better physical health, visit the doctor more often for preventative care, and even have fewer instances of depression and suicide than do their divorced, separated, or never-married peers. The married are also less likely to engage in risky health behaviors—they drink less, and are less likely to be smokers or to use recreational drugs.

Furthermore, when illness does occur, married people make better and faster recoveries. The same Oslo researchers concluded not only that the married have higher cancer survival rates (a fact long established by research), but also that their advantage has been growing in recent years. They speculate that one reason for the latter is that "social cohesion in a society may have decreased over time." Marriage, it seems, offers the "social cohesion" necessary when individuals need care and emotional support to make it through a trying time of illness.

Once married, a couple—particularly the woman—benefits from the decision to have children. In a recent study, Australian researchers noted that "childless women . . . reported statistically significant poorer general health, vitality, social functioning and mental health when compared to the adult female population of Australia" (Graham et al., BMC Public Health, 2011). Once she is a mother, a woman gains the most health advantages if she breastfeeds her child—
a woman who has breastfed is less likely to develop breast cancer, ovarian cancer, Type 2 diabetes, and postpartum depression.

And what about the children? In spite of our best arguments about the equivalence between all types of parenthood (single, divorced, remarried, same-sex, etc.), it seems that children in mother-father, married homes do strikingly better across almost all categories than do children from other family forms. They are healthier overall, particularly in maintaining a balanced weight; they are less prone to depression and suicide; and they are less likely to develop risky health behaviors as teens or adults.

So why do we, as a nation, spend so much time and money on treating illnesses instead of treating their root causes? Why do legislators spend billions of taxpayer dollars regulating insurance companies instead of promoting policies that strengthen marriage and family life? Why do media outlets spill pools of ink on the dangers of fast food and sugared beverages instead of aiming their pens at divorce courts and our generally anti-family culture?

One almost suspects our legislators of wanting to increase dependence on government handouts instead of wanting to increase the number of autonomous, healthy, functioning families.