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krw

In article ,
says...
"krw" wrote in message
t...

1. Longevity (age at death), infant mortality, morbidity
(incidence of hospitalized disease) etc. The USA usually
ranks about 30th of the 150+ countries in the world.

These are not good indicators of the health care system at all. For
example, infant mortality is biased by the inner-city population who
doesn't seek health care, druggies, and pregnancies that are so
troubled that they wouldn't get as far (or be counted) as birth
elsewhere

Just remind us please which of the other top 30 countries
of the world leave the poorest people out of national
statiistics of infant mortality.

Simple, really. If they aren't born alive they aren't counted.
Often if they don't live for a certain time they aren't counted as
live births. Not all countries spend the resources the US does on the
most premature. You can't use raw statistics like the above to draw
such broad conclusions.

2. Personal coverage by health insurance. The USA is
the only "advanced" country to have no comprehensive
system of health insurance, so that a significant part
of the population (20 or 15 per cent) has no coverage at all.

This is no measure of anything other than the obvious (and the
politics of "health care"). Most of those uninsured choose not to
have health insurance (or care) or are inbetween. Do note that
"health care" insurance.

Yes, we are sometimes told "Most of those uninsured choose not to
have health insurance (or care)."

Only because it's true.

The point is that in civilized
countries arrange beforehand to cover the unforeseeable.

Civilized countries don't run their citizen's lives for them. Choice
is important to some.

We
know X hundred people will be injured in road accidents next
week, but we do not know which individuals: so we prearrange
health care for all X00 accident victims whoever they may turn
out to be.

....and if it turns out there are X01 victims, it's tough be be the
one standing when the music stops.

The USA seems to be almost the only jurisdiction that
deliiberately avoids doing this. This may be one reason why,
after the fact, health care costs Americans more (as a percentage
of income) than it does Frenchmen, Australians, Brazilians etc.

There are many reasons why it costs more, but it's not because the
French know how many traffic accidents there will be.

--
Keith