The World Health Organization produced a ranking of the world's health systems back in 2000. I won't bother listing all 190 countries, but notice who is 37th (just ahead of Slovenia) and how so many countries with "socialized medicine" leave us in the dust.
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
We have already covered this. The WHO ranking is faulty for a large number of reasons.
For example, life expectancy rates does not take into account, cultural differences. For example, people in France live longer than people in the US. Is that due to health care? Not exactly. France has a much lower crime/murder rate. France also has a much lower auto accident deaths because of fewer high speed highways. The people in France also typically eat better than we do in general. Less fast foods and such.
When you take those, and other factors, into consideration, we actually live longer than those in France.
Another example, infant mortality rates in Canada do not include mothers who are sent across the boarder because their own hospitals have no room. One woman was told by 3 Canadian doctors that her child would die. She went to the US, and the doctors gave her treatment and saved the child's life. That isn't reflected in statistics. If not for our hospitals, the infant mortality rate would be lower in Canada.
Another example is Cuba which if the child dies within hours of birth, they simply don't count it. Like it never lived at all. Of course if you don't count the children that die, your infant mortality rate will be quite a bit better.
Another problem with WHO's report, is that they base all their ranking data, simply on official government numbers. Of course logically, each government is going to paint their government program, in the best possible light. Some outright lie. Castro's government in Cuba could hardly be considered a trust worthy source of information. Listening to them, you'd think Cuba was a paradise. Yet taking photographs is illegal in Cuba, and so is floating on a boat to the US.
Another factor that WHO bring into their ranking, is how 'equal' it is. This has nothing to do with the quality of care, the advancement of care, or how effective the care is at treating illness. But simply how equal it is.
In short, if everyone is treated awful, everyone given minimal care, but every is treated equally bad all around, that system would rank higher, than another system that generally treated everyone better, but not equally.
Finely, most of the statistics do not include long term treatment success. When you simply look at how effective the health care system treats patients, and get's them well, the truth really comes out as to which system has better outcomes.
In short, WHO does not look at the most important factor, while weighting irrelevant factors. It has skewed statistics that do not reflect the real outcome, or have statistic that are just outright lies.
