* WINNERS: Utah, Idaho and Wyoming for being the healthiest states in the nation. Utah easily outranked all other states in a survey released this week by the Morgan Quitno Corp. of Kansas. The survey ranked the states on such factors as birth rate, infant mortality rate, death rate by AIDS, availability of hospitals, percent of population covered by health insurance, and per capita health care payments.
LOSER: Florida. It ranked dead last in the health survey, just behind Delaware, Missouri and Alabama. Clearly a balmy climate isn't everything.LOSERS: The many Americans who are being poisoned by tobacco even though they don't use it. A few days ago the Environmental Protection Agency labeled secondhand smoke a carcinogen that kills about 3,000 nonsmokers a year from lung cancer alone. Now a new study by the Centers for Disease Control has found signs of nicotine in all 800 of the first people tested, whether they smoked or not. The new findings add strength to efforts to put not just parts of various public places but entire buildings off limits to smoking.
LOSERS: Americans without health insurance. Their ranks have grown to an estimated 36.6 million people, according to a new report from a Washington research organization called the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Surprisingly, most of the uninsured are members of families headed by a full-time, full-year worker. So much for the notion that the uninsured are generally unemployed or very old. In reality, the uninsured tend to be the working poor.
- TOUGHEST LEGISLATURE: The one in California, which this week unanimously required tardy lawmakers to stand and explain if they are 30 minutes or more late in arriving at the scheduled start of a legislative session. It could have been worse. The late legislators could have been told to bring a written excuse from their parents.
- SICKEST SITUATION: The one in Lorrain, Ohio, where other students bet $200 on the outcome after two junior high school girls plotted to kill their English teacher. The plot was thwarted when the teacher was warned just moments before class was to begin. But so much for notions about the innocence of childhood.