World Health Organization Rankings Distort U.S. Position.
source: http://firstfriday.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/world-health-organization-rankings-distort-us-po...
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http://firstfriday.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/world-health-organization...
According to the WHO, the American health care system is inferior to those of some third-world countries. But John Stossel points out that this ranking is based on aburd (and presumably ideologically-motivated) criteria. Indeed, when factors such as accidents and murders (which may or may not say something about a society, but not about the quality of its health care) are removed from the equation, America is near the top for longevity:…the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. …So what’s wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways. The WHO judged a country’s quality of health on life expectancy. But that’s a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That’s not a health-care problem. …Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada. When you adjust for these “fatal injury” rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation. …The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how “fairly” health care of any quality is “distributed.”
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