Advocates of socializing health care have asked: how can America’s relatively free market spend the most money on health care, yet have among the worst outcomes?
The answer is, we don’t. The oft-cited WHO rankings don’t really measure quality of health care, preferring to judge things like “fairness of financial contribution” and measures like life expectancy (which is more strongly correlated to lifestyle than health care) or infant mortality (other countries use different standards and so generally record more infant deaths as stillbirths than we do, perversely making their numbers better even though they sometimes let marginal infants die).
American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn’t even close:
U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average
U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD
Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered
Death panels: now in kids’ sizes too! Infants being left to die.
U.S. has about twice as many MRIs as OECD average
U.S. performs more operations than any country in the world.
Please feel free to steal, share and cite any or all of these links early and often. If anyone else has links to add, please share in the comments! Don’t let them take the best care in the world away from us without a fight!

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But, see, Starfield, in JAMA (2000):
About 220,000 americans die each year from hospital infections, mis-treatments and prescription drugs.
Way bigger problem than the silly swine flu.
I would say this about American health care:
1. Emergency Room: Best in the world. If you get hit by a bus, and get to an ER, you have a better shot at surviving than anywhere in the world.
2. High End Surgery: Best in the world. If you need to separate Siamese Twins or need some high-falutin’ neurosurgery or reconstructive plastic surgery, we are no doubt the tops.
3. Diagnostics: Lotta fancy tests –MRIs at the peak.
But, a lot of the other stuff is just bells and whistles and crap.
Good book: “Overtreated: Why too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer.”
–HB
What is that per capita?
What is that per patient hour/day/visit?
We are what, the 3 rd most populous country in the world? Do you think India and China or the EU as a whole (which is bigger than the U.S.) have fewer deaths?
Taking a raw number out of context tells me nothing.
Done: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2009/10/everything-you-were-afraid-to-ask-about.html
Thanks
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