Low Health Care Ranking Debunked

John Stossel takes a look under the hood of the WHO study that Michael Moore and so many others make so much of when they push for socialized medicine, and finds, in his words, "less than meets the eye".

So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.

Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.

When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

Unsurprisingly, the study also skewed its results through a criterion it called "fairness", which basically gave points for government interference in the medical sector -- a category in which our nation should strive mightily for last place.

And Stossel's not done yet. He closes with this teaser: "Next week: the truth about the Commonwealth Fund study." Stay tuned.

-- CAV