Dear Friends,
I have received several comments from Liberal Demise about health care. Many of his comments reflect the narrative of American exceptionalism which generally holds that America is the greatest in all respects and can do no wrong. The United States of America is truly a great nation, but it is not perfect. There is much that we can learn from other countries, and we would be foolish not to.
With respect to health care, the United States has many truly excellent physicians, nurses, other health care providers as well as great hospitals and clinic. Unfortunately, these excellent health care professionals and resources are not available to a large number of people. Consequently, our health outcomes are a disgrace for such a wealthy and great country. The latest World Health Organization study "Measuring Overall Health System Performance for 191 Countries" ranks the United States 37th right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. (here).
There are people who criticize the methodology used by the World Health Organization, but even so we should be ashamed that we are not at the top. It is also possible to consider other specific outcomes to demonstrate that our health care system is not the best in the world in terms of outcomes. Here are a few examples.
The United States ranks 116th in terms of maternal mortality with 8 per 100,000. That rank puts us behind #130 Kuwait with 5 out of 100,000; #134 United Arab Emirates with 3 per 100,000 and #135 Greece with 1 per 100,000. (See)
The United States ranks 185th in terms of infant mortality with 6.3 per 1,000. That rank puts us behind #186 Cuba with 5.93 per 1,000 and #208 Solvenia with 4.3 per 1,000. (See)
In terms of life expectancy at birth the United States ranks 47th at 78.14 which puts us just ahead of #52 Albania at 77.78 and behind #43 Bosnia at 78.33, #41 South Korea at 78.64 and #6 Hong Kong at 81.72. (See)
It is impossible to claim that the United States has the best health care system in the world with infant and maternal mortality rates such as these and with a life expectancy rank of 47. We can claim that we have lots of great doctors and hospitals and clinics and drugs, but we can not claim that our system produces good outcomes.
I should note that I have not listed the ranks of some of the health care systems that people opposed to health care reform say are terrible like France and the United Kingdom. So just to set things straight here are their results:
WHO study France is #1, United Kingdom is #18 and the United States is #37.
Infant Mortality - France is 220th with 3.36 per 1,000; United Kingdom is 197th with 4.93 per 1,000 and United States is 185th with 6.3 per 1,000.
Maternal Mortality - United Kingdom is 121st with 7 per 100,000; United States is 116th with 8 per 100,000; and France is 111th with 10 per 100,000.
Life Expectancy at Birth - France is 9th with 80.87; United Kingdom is 37th with 78.85; and United States is 47th with 78.14.
As if these outcomes aren't enough to embarrass the United States, in terms of health care spending per person the United States ranks first at $4,271 compared with France ranking #7 at $2,288 and United Kingdom ranking #18 at $1,675. So not only are the United States outcomes a disaster, we pay 1.9 times as much as France and 2.5 times as much as United Kingdom.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
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The idea that people criticize methodology of the WHO rather than acknowledging the problem of poor health care really bugs me.
ReplyDeleteWe recently had this same problem at EHS. Because it's discouraging and embarrassing to admit that we have a big achievement-gap problem in our school, many teachers complained about the way our gap data was displayed on the power point.
I don't like the practice of starting a new and unrelated argument in order to avoid uncomfortable facts. It really gets in the way of working toward solutions.
Another great post! Thanks for being so prolific, even as you're on vacation.