Biases in International Health Care Rankings

[manifold]

Sampling error - your experience is singular and subjective. I doubt if that amounts to a valid critique either way. As for arguing for "socialised medicine", you give yourself away using a term that, in American political terms, is loaded. Universal health care is a neutral term and because it is I prefer it as it take some of the partisanship out of the argument. This is a subject that should be above ideology and partisan politics, unfortunately for some reason in these forums, it becomes exactly that.

No offense, but playing semantics isn't exactly a convincing argument. Universal healthcare is a euphamism for socialized medicine.

And I fully acknowledge the sampling error, but I'm still not willing to ignore the eye-ball test just because some assclown with his own political agenda goes on a data mining expedition and produces a steaming pile of shit.

Show me one single piece of evidence that my claim, even fraught with insidious sampling error, is not the truth.

 

[Rhys]

Universal healthcare is a euphamism for socialized medicine.QUOTE]

For civilisation, perhaps, like not arming every nutter to the teeth or locking up/executing whole classes of people? It is extremely difficult for the rest of us to believe that there are still rich countries without a Health Service. Socialised Medicine indeed! Like wicked socialised Law and so on. Almost everything is enormously better run democratically - cheaper and much more efficient.

 

[manifold]

I now have a new anecdotal datapoint I must add to the mix that stands in stark contrast to the others I've discussed. Somehow that both pleases me and pisses me off at the same time.

 

[Ravi]

What and how?

 

[morpheus]

Yup our system is so flawed people PAY to fly here for medical care from countries that rank higher then us on these supposed independent rankings. They PAY for our medical services rather then get the "free" care in their own countries.

The US has many of the world's top hospitals, but very few Americans have the financial access to these top hospitals. There are, however, a handful few rich foreingers who are willing to pay to come to these hospitals in the United States, rather than wait on a list for hip surgery. There are many instances of poorer Americans receiving charity healthcare, but I have heard just as many horror stories of Americans falling into debt with collection agencies. The system is broken, although some will refuse to admit this.

The overall healthcare provided to the masses is still superior in, say Britain, than in the United States. While it's easy to argue that the quality of healthcare is far better in the United States than in, say Botswana, despite Botswana's egalitarian healthcare system, we can't make the same kind of argument comparing the United States to other prosperous nations with comparable standards of living with the US such as the nations of Western Europe and certain nations of East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea). Additionally, the criticism of the WHO mentioned in the opening post of this thread is itself plagued with political biases: overlooking [and downplaying] reasonable comparisons between the United States and Western Europe simply because a developing nation (Colombia) scored relatively high, but without going into much detail and accusing the report's authors of emphasizing political ideology rather than pragmatism, is an approach that -in itself- displays bias.

The system in the United States is broken, and instead of attacking whistleblowers, we should be exploring how these problems -or cracks in the system- should be addressed, and we should be brainstorming solutions, whether the system needs radical change or just a little tweaking.

 

[jreeves]

QUOTE=manifold;703062]No offense edi, but I'm with RGS on this one.

IMO, these stats you trumpet speak more to the fact that many Americans simply lead unhealthy lifestyles and have very little to do with the quality and access to medical treatement when required.[/QUOTE]



The reasons Americans have more health problems....