http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22148

In May, the Commonwealth Fund issued its latest comparison of the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations’ systems: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain.

Predictably, the study begins: “Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms.”

I was immediately suspicious, considering the loaded study by the World Health Organization seven years ago. (I wrote about it last week.)

Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, summed up what’s wrong with the study: “The report does nothing more than reveal which nation does the worst job of satisfying the subjective preferences of the people who conducted this study.”
Fans of the Canadian system should note that Canada ranked fifth out of six and did worse than the U.S. in many ways.

I love how this and the WHO report go out of their way to make the US system look bad without it looking so bad as to be unbelievable. Since most people only read the headlines or the overall ‘rank’ assigned it makes it easy to sneak the truth by the public. It’s interesting how they weight having computers to print medication lists the same as receiving preventive care. Equity doesn’t go into detail as to what ’sick’ means when people don’t go to the doctor when sick. Lots of people don’t go when sick because it’s not necessary. How many of those in the UK (who’s 1st in equity) go just because they can? I’ve read that the elderly will make appointments because they are lonely and in some UK hospitals they’ve had to introduce a small copay to keep them from wasting the doctors time. Freedom will drive down health care and insurance prices and keep our quality up… not more government regulation.

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