If You're Planning on Having a Heart Attack

Aim to have it in an airport or casino, rather than a hospital.

Doctors already knew that more than half of those who suffer such attacks in airports and casinos survive. But a new study shows that only a third of victims in hospitals survive -- primarily because patients do not receive life-saving defibrillation within the recommended two minutes.

Nearly 40% of hospital patients who received defibrillation within two minutes survived, compared with 22% of those for whom the response took longer, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Also, it will be really helpful for you if you're white, or at least not black.

For reasons that are not clear, black patients were less likely to receive the treatment within the two-minute window. Patients who were not attached to a heart monitor and those admitted for conditions not involving heart disease were also less likely to receive the quickest treatment.

In a similar vein, ditto if you need pain medication.

Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, a new study finds.

But thank god we're not suffering like those Canadians. I hear they have rationing.