US Health Care Ranks Last Again

O.K., the US health care system isn't the worst in the world -- I'd still rather have surgery in Sioux Falls than in Russia -- but a new report ranks the US 19th out of 19 industrialized countries in stopping preventable deaths with "timely and effective health care." Those damnable socialists in France led the list for effective health care, followed by Japan and Australia. If the US got its poop in a group and provided care as effectively as France, we would save 101,000 lives a year ["Study: France Best, U.S. Worst in Terms of Preventable Deaths," FoxNews.com, 2008.01.08].

Gee, what do France, Japan, and Australia have that we don't (aside from a whole lot of unnecessary deaths)? Could it be national health insurance?

According to [study co-author] Nolte the large number of Americans without any type of health insurance (about 47 million people in a population of 300 million according to U.S. government estimates), was possibly a key factor in the poor results of the United States in comparison to other industrialized nations in the study.

When the researchers compared these latest rankings with rankings for the same 19 countries for the period of 1997 and 1998, France and Japan also were also first and second, while the U.S. was 15th; this means the U.S. fell four places....

The research was supported by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent foundation working toward health policy reform and a high performance health system and is published in the journal Health Affairs.

Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen says the fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals, and efforts to improve health systems make a difference ["France, Japan and Australia top in dealing with preventable deaths...U.S. bottom!" News-Medical.net, 2008.01.09]

You tell me: is the free market worth 101,000 extra deaths a year? Don't forget: that's over 30 times the number of people Osama killed in America in 2001.

Get with the program, America -- voting pro-life means voting for real universal health care.

If you have money, you can read the original report: Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee, "Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating and Earlier Analysis," Health Affairs (27:1), 2008, pp. 58-71.