The TRUTH about the World Health Organization (WHO) ranking of United States as 37th is a decade old, greatly misleading and often quoted incorrectly to make a political statement. Here are some facts.
The WHO ranking is NOT JUST FOR THE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE, but consists of five factors, arbitrarily weighted, where only one factor is strictly for health care, one is a mixture and health care and some subjective factors and three are for WHO criteria of "fairness" which favor socialized health care countries.
The "Health Level" is weighted only 25% of the total score and is a measure of life expectancy which is the closest criterion to health care quality. If you remove homicide rate and accident death rate, which are social issues, then the United States has a longer life expectancy than any other country.
A second factor, "Responsiveness", is weighted only 12.5% and measures factors such as choice of doctors and speed of service which are relevant to quality of care, but also contains some other qualitative factors not related to quality of health care.
The other three factors account for 62.5% of the total score and reward systems where everyone gets the same level of care no matter how bad it is and where everyone pays the same percentage of income for health care no matter how much they earn. A country that has uniformly poor care where the government runs the system and taxes everyone on their ability to pay will rank higher than a country that has excellent care for most citizens but only medium care for some citizens and which has a free market for patients and providers.
The U.S. has the highest quality of health care, is the most advanced technologically and attracts thousands of foreigners who can afford to come here with medical problems; they don't go to the other 36 nations with higher WHO rankings.
All those who believe the WHO rankings ought to travel to one of the first 36 countries when they have a serious illness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment