About that WHO study
Many articles that have been written about the urgent need to reform the US healthcare system cite a WHO study that claims America ranks 37th out of 191 countries in the quality of its healthcare. Here are the top ten countries on that list:
1. France
2. Italy
3. San Marino
4. Andorra
5. Malta
6. Singapore
7. Spain
8. Oman
9. Austria
10. Japan
Leaving aside the question of whether you’d go to any of these countries for an operation, could you even find Oman, Andorra, Malta or San Marino on a map if you needed to? San Marino is kind of cool since it has a population of 30,000 and nonetheless is said to be a real country with membership in the Council of Europe and all. Andorra, another completely landlocked micro-state where people live to ripe old ages, has a population of 84,000.
So two of the top ten countries are quite a bit smaller than the 217th largest US city, Rochester, Minnesota (population 100,000), home to the Mayo Clinic. Question: if the town of Rochester, Minnesota seceded from the union and became a country, would it become #1 on the WHO’s list?
And speaking of #8 ranked Oman, how would you like to flag down a cab to go to a hospital in Muscat for an emergency appendectomy — a city where taxis have no meters and you’d have to negotiate your fare with the driver? That could be an interesting negotiation indeed. So you can believe the WHO study (which also ranks Chile, Colombia and Greece ahead of the US) or you can use your head. Your choice.
August 16th, 2009 at 6:49 am
foreign hospitals are bond to improve a lot if obamacare is passed: many usa drs will split and go where they are free top practice health care on people and not public health on the masses.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I see the UN determined the US is not very “fair in financial contribution”. So it would appear we get marked down for not being socialist.
Then you have to wonder where they would rank US if stats were broken down by socio-economic brackets. The linked study was from 1997, so I wonder what a million new Muslim/Africans would do to France’s standing.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:51 am
Listing France as #1 is very disturbing. Remember this is the country that in 2003 allowed many thousands of elderly to die in hospitals and care facilities as a result of the heat wave they had that August.