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June 19, 2005
WHO Rankings
In researching the Canadian Supreme Court ruling the last couple of days I came across references to the World Health Organization's ranking of nations when it came to health care. Canada came in 30th and the United States came in 37th.
The U.S health care system may not be perfect (I don't know of one that is), the low score surprised me. So I did some digging...
The ranking was done in 2000, not too long ago. What I found was the ranking criteria was heavily ranked by who wrote the final check - Public or private health care spending. Medicare = good. Aetna = bad.
The report also ranked high their view of efficiency in spending. A criteria which will always work against the country that spends the most on health care (which is America). In this category Oman had the highest score even though it has a much lower quality of care(which includes an infant mortality rate twice that of the U.S.).
Another criteria was whether the cost of each individual's health care was based on 'risk' or on 'ability to pay'. This tends to skew against the more capitalist societies. Columbia came in first.
Another factor in the ranking was life spans. This isn't as useful of a measure as you would think. People in different countries make different lifestyle choices. Exercise & making healthy eating chioces (Japan/Utah) will tend to extend life spans regardless of the health system. However, due to differences in the health care systems a man in the U.S. is 24% less likely to die from prostate cancer than a man in Canada. Yet WHO ranks Canada seven spots higher in the world rankings?
So how heavily were those items weighted into the final scores? In these catagories the U.S. achieved the highest scores (best in the world):
Responsiveness to patients' needs for choice of provider
Dignity
Autonomy
Timely care
Confidentiality
So despite scoring 1st in these five (arguably important) categories, the U.S. ended up with a ranking of 37. So if you needed critical medical care which would you choose - America, Columbia, Oman?
Posted by Dave at June 19, 2005 10:58 AM
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