Governments Can't Run Health Care? Really?
Today, I learned some new statistics, and I'm wondering what's left to the argument that government health care causes worse results.
Comparing the United States to Great Britain (socialized health care), Canada and Germany (government single-payer systems), two fun statistics.
First, from the CIA comes infant mortality rates. The rates are given in number of deaths per thousand live births, so the lower the number, the better.
The United States comes in a perfectly respectable 6.26. That's a rank of 180 out of 224 (in this case, the higher the rank, the better. Singapore is #224, with 2.31 infant deaths per 1000 live births).
Canada is #189 (5.04), the U.K. #193 (4.85) and Germany #210 (3.99). All three systems have better infant survival rates that the United States.
Also from the CIA, there is a list of average life expectancies. Of 224 countries, the U.S. comes in 50th, with an average life expectancy of 78.11. This time the LOWER rank is better, the #1 rank is held by Macau with an average life expectancy of 84.36.
The U.K. is #36 (79.01), Germany is #32 (79.26) and Canada is #8 (81.23). Again, each significantly better than the U.S.
So the question I have is this: With these results, how is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the government getting involved in my health care?
***
Update: Someone just pointed out that France spends 11% of their GDP and covers everyone, we spend 16.5% of ours and leave about 20% of those under 65 un-covered. So I figured I'd check where France fell on the above metrics. They beat all of the above on infant mortality, coming in at #217 (3.33 deaths per thousand live births), and they come in just behind Canada at #9 on the longevity list, with an average life expectancy of 80.98.
One more check in the "government run health care" box.
posted by Liam at 9/14/2009 07:14:00 PM
5 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:24:00 PM
(The deleted post was my own, I noticed a typo and wanted to correct it).
Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:26:00 PM
That's the best you could come up with?
"The CIA are liars"?
Tell me, where did you come down on the issue when Nancy Pelosi was accusing them of misleading the Congress?
Were you happily on the "the CIA are liars" bandwagon then? Or are they only liars when they put out statistics you don't approve of?
Do you have any evidence that their pages (that I linked to) are fraudulent? Or do you simply wish it were so?
There are so many better ways you could have attacked this. You could have pointed out that longevity has as much to do with lifestyle and diet as it has to do with the medical system.
You could have looked up statistics and said (I'm not sure if this is true, but I don't know that it isn't, either) that the reason our infant mortality rate is higher is that we try to save premature babies at a much earlier time in a pregnancy than those other countries do, so obviously if we take on the high risk babies, we're going to lose a higher percentage. In much the same way that the best cancer centers in the country also have higher failure rates (until you break it down by types and stages of cancer at first diagnosis), because the worse your cancer is, the more likely you are to go to one of them.
You could also have attacked this with the statistic that I've heard (but have not verified) that we have a much higher rate of traffic accident deaths in this country, and if you remove those deaths from everyone's count (since they don't really relate to medical effectiveness), our expected life span is higher.
But all you could come up with was "the CIA are liars."
Nice.
Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:27:00 PM
Ever notice how some people ask for opinions often but criticize all opinions offered?
Thursday, October 01, 2009 4:42:00 PM
Welcoming differing opinion doesn't mean agreeing with it. That's the nature of debate.
There are certainly people who close their minds to all dissent and pull the adult equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "LALALALA-I-AM-NOT-LISTENING-LALALALA".
If you were talking about me, I ask for the other side, and I listen, and I sometimes change my opinion based on new facts. Other times, the differing opinions I'm given don't persuade me, and so I dissent back with my reasons. It's part of the give and take of debate.
And sometimes, one person will mindlessly repeat the same argument over and over, never really changing it to cover new facts or new items of debate. And sometimes that person will have bought into a single core belief with an almost religious fervor (such as a belief in the perfection of "free markets"), to such an extent and with such an uncritical eye that they become a non-thinking automaton.
Eventually, it's time to stop listening to such a person, because either they are correct in their faith in their core beliefs or they are not, but the debate is no longer based on facts and a give and take, but on a conflict of articles-of-faith.
Oh, and when I ask for other opinions, I want the facts behind them. Merely asserting an opinion (such as "The CIA are liars") without evidence does nothing to further the debate. I can assert "the Moon has a breathable atmosphere" or "Vitamin D cures the flu" or "Instant Replay in the NFL causes more bad calls than it resolves" or even "you are a moron", but that adds nothing to whatever debate I was taking part in, unless I can provide some evidence for my assertion.
Liam.
Monday, October 26, 2009 6:49:00 AM
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