Lagging Health Care Nicks U.S. Tourism Competitiveness

...and ethnocentrism doesn't help!

Health care notes from an unlikely source: The World Economic Forum produces numerous reports on global competitiveness. Their March 2009 report on Travel & Tourism Competitiveness ranks countries based on their attractiveness to visitors and the travel industry. The United States ranks 8th overall, behind various socialists (including Canada).

But dig into the rankings, and you find we fail to make the top ten in a number of categories, including...

• life expectancy (29th)
• physician density (39th)
• hospital beds (54th)

We also rank 91st in attitude of population toward foreign visitors. Hmm... maybe if we were a bit more open to those durn furriners, we'd actually learn from them that universal health insurance works.

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Bonus links! Here are some health care gems from around the South Dakota blogosphere:

• David Newquist says the Republican Party is choosing rage and racism over the real reform that hundreds of thousands of South Dakotans need.
• Bill Fleming catches an Economist article that offers a wonderful cost-benefit analysis: is a modest gain in cancer survival rates really worth bankrupting an extra million-plus Americans each year? The article comes out in favor of pretty much the same insurance reforms that President Obama has been pushing all along (decent things like not kicking cancer patients off insurance), reforms that will do no harm at all to our cancer treatment system.
• Adam Feser joins me in giving props to Senator Al Franken for a darned good explanation of what health insurance reform can and should do.