One congressman states that the US is ranked 37 out of all industrialized nations in health care?

Maybe so, but out of all the industrialized nations, we have the most of what the others do not have. FREEDOM.





And thanks to our congress, we are rapidly approaching the point of becoming one of the few industrialized nations, with NO industry! Imagine that!!|||We lost our freedom under Bush.





At least give us Health Care.|||Your Congressperson is absolutely correct...as ranked by the WHO.





Your second sentence, though, is incorrect...ever hear of the bush "patriot act", or NSA spying?...





Your third is incorrect, as well.





If I may ask you: do you actually read, or simply listen to fox "news"?





Next, please?|||Popular Ranking Unfairly Misrepresents the U.S. Health Care System


Jun 1st, 2009


By: Richard G. Fessler, MD, PhD





The media and political community have made a big deal out of the fact that the U.S. ranks 37 out of 191 countries on the World Health Organization’s Health Care Ranking System. Is this tool a credible way to compare quality health care delivered in the U.S. vs the rest of the world?





Let’s be perfectly clear about this, the United States Health Care is second to none! Ask the tens of thousands of patients who travel internationally to the US every year for their health care. As an example of the quality of health care delivered in the US, Americans have a higher survival rate than any other country on earth for 13 of 16 of the most common cancers. Perhaps that is why Belinda Stronach, former liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and Cabinet member (one of the health care systems touted as “superior” to the US) abandoned the Canadian Health Care system to undergo her cancer treatment in California.1





But to understand how WHO derives this misleading statistic, which has been ballyhooed widely by both the media and politicians alike, you need to understand how it is created. WHO’s health care rankings are constructed from five factors each weighted according to a formula derived by WHO. These are:





1. Health Level: 25 percent





2. Health Distribution: 25 percent





3. Responsiveness: 12.5 percent





4. Responsiveness Distribution: 12.5 percent





5. Financial Fairness: 25 percent





“Health level” is a measure of a countries “disability adjusted life expectancy”. This factor makes sense, since it is a direct measure of the health of a country’s residents. However, even “life expectancy” can be affected by many factors not related to health care per se, such as poverty, homicide rate, dietary habits, accident rate, tobacco use, etc. In fact, if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from MVA’s from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth.2





“Responsiveness” measures a variety of factors such as speed of service, choice of doctors, and amenities (e.g. quality of linens). Some of these make sense to include (speed of service) but some have no direct relationship to health care (quality of linens). These two factors at least make some sense in a ranking of health care, but each is problematic as well.





The other three factors are even worse. “Financial fairness” measures the percentage of household income spent on health care. It can be expected that the “percentage” of income spent on health care decreases with increasing income, just as is true for food purchases and housing. Thus, this factor does not measure the quality or delivery of health care, but the value judgment that everyone should pay the same “percentage” of their income on health care even regardless of their income or use of the system. This factor is biased to make countries that rely on free market incentives look inferior. It rewards countries that spend the same percentage of household income on health care, and punishes those that spend either a higher or lower percentage, regardless of the impact on health. In the extreme then, a country in which all health care is paid for by the government (with money derived from a progressive tax system), but delivers horrible health care, will score perfectly in this ranking, whereas a country where the amount paid for health care is based on use of the system, but delivers excellent health care will rank poorly. To use this factor to justify more government involvement in health care, therefore, is using circular reasoning since this factor is designed to favor government intervention.





“Health Distribution and Responsiveness Distribution” measure inequality in the other factors. In other words, neither factor actually measures the quality of health care delivery, because “inequality of delivery” is independent of “quality of care”. It is possible, for example, to have great inequality in a health care system where the majority of the population gets “excellent” health care, but a minority only gets “good” health care. This system would rank more poorly on these measures than another country that had “equal”, but poor, health care throughout the system.





In summary, therefore, the WHO ranking system has minimal objectivity in its “ranking” of world health. It more accurately can be described as a ranking system inherently biased to reward the uniformity of “government” delivered (i.e. “socialized”) health care, independent of the care actually delivered. In that regard the relatively low ranking of the US in the WHO system can be viewed as a “positive” testament to at least some residual “free market” influence (also read “personal freedom”) in the American Health Care system.|||Those numbers are skewed because they take into consideration the age of death. There are a lot of blacks and mexicans killing each other in the liberal inner cities. These numbers should be taken away from the statistics.|||agreed we have the best healthcare in the world but who can afford the monthly premiums every month?and europe and canada arent free?|||More drivel from the anti-America left... and we expected HONESTY?! Puhlease...|||Freedom from what; false wars, corrupt politicians, Corporate control of our government? Dick Cheney personally netted 67 million dollars from the Iraq war by way of his investments in companies made huge profits in Iraq. The list of frauds is virtually endless. Ignorance and a lack of participation by the public is not freedom while the national deficit was doubled in only 8 years and God forbid that the government should help out the middle class even for a moment when the wealthy have been so well served. By the way I heard that we were #19 in terms of longevity and infant mortality and at twice the cost of other developed countries- We even overcharge for our horrible, for some, health Care Industry. I'm no lefty just some one that's pretty sure of what's really going on- How can one miss it?|||Sorry to correct you but your blaming congress for the industry leaving this country is incorrect. Private companies, and publicly held companies have outsourced (moved to other countries) a lot of their manufactoring in order to be more profitalble. I have travel to different countries, and this notion that so many people have in this country that other countries have no freedoms is false. There are many countries where citizens enjoy the same rights and freedoms as we do here.|||Wait.....Dont forget we will lose our freedom soon too.





Remember, to Obama and His Flock of idiots we Americans are stupid and the Green wackjobs and Facist Nazis in Congress and The White House are the genuises.





They want us to live like they do in Africa.........No modern anything and all die at age 35......That is the 'Dream of His Fathers'%26lt;----A joke in and of itself...|||i wonder why??? look at how many MILLIONS of illegals are draining those resources...