…unless you’re looking at “responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient”.  The much touted U.N. World Health Organization’s ranking system’s assessment that our country’s healthcare system ranks number 37, only slightly better than Cuba is misleading.  Why do we rank number 37 in “overall performance”?  Well, that category is a subjective assessment by WHO members on how well we do compared with our perceived resources.  Possibly the most important ranking is the assessment of how a country does with regards to the “needs and choices of the individual patient”.  In the end, if the patient isn’t getting the care needed and allowed certain choices in their personal health management.  In this category the United States ranks number 1.  Period.  End of story.  Oh, wait, you don’t buy it.  Well let’s run through some of the facts that Mark Constantian over at the WSJ pulled together:

• cardiac deaths in the U.S. have fallen by two-thirds over the past 50 years
• Polio has been virtually eradicated
• Childhood leukemia has a high cure rate
• Eight of the top 10 medical advances in the past 20 years were developed or had roots in the U.S.
• The Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology have been awarded to more Americans than to researchers in all other countries combined.
• Eight of the 10 top-selling drugs in the world were developed by U.S. companies.
• The U.S. has some of the highest breast, colon and prostate cancer survival rates in the world.
• Our country ranks first or second in the world in kidney transplants, liver transplants, heart transplants, total knee replacements, coronary artery bypass, and percutaneous coronary interventions.
• We have the shortest waiting time for nonemergency surgery in the world; England has one of the longest. In Canada, a country of 35 million citizens, 1 million patients now wait for surgery and another million wait to see specialists

So the easy carrot to dangle is the number 37 ranking but let’s look at the intro on the WHO website for the 2008 report that is being cited:

Globalization is putting the social cohesion of many countries under stress, and health systems are clearly not performing as well as they could and should. People are increasingly impatient with the inability of health services to deliver. Few would disagree that health systems need to respond better – and faster – to the challenges of a changing world. 

 Why do health systems need to respond better and faster to a changing world?  They need to respond to their patients.  Clearly there is a bias here but the emphasis point is still clear in the intro: “People are increasing impatient of health services to deliver” – right, and the U.S. is NUMBER ONE in delivering against patients’ needs and choices.  The United States spends the highest percentage of GDP of any country on healthcare.  I submit that the number 37 ranking is biased and likely in error when you consider the number one ranking in a key factor (as stated in their intro) and the fact that the United States spends the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare for its citizens (and illegal immigrants).  But, of course, President Obama, Sen. Reid, the 60 democrat (and independent) senators believe that we’re facing a health care crisis that we need to act upon now…well, at least fund now and act in 2013 or 2014.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.