Nobody Wants to Say That Sarah Palin Is Qualified to Be President

[ungar]

Daniel is completely right, when it comes to routine things, western europe is prob a little ahead of us.

The European Union is certainly stronger both economically, and militarily, for uniting into a superpower.

But each state has it's own healthcare policies, and many of them are having huge problems that will only get worse.

A lot the economic pressure caused by "social democracies"(moving towards fascism in the EU) has been masked by their central banks as the US economy is being sabotaged by The Federal Reserve, and IMF.

Europe will have to come to grips with this soon, and the solution will be war!

Edited October 22, 2010 by ungar

[DevsMan84]

The European Union is certainly stronger both economically, and militarily, for uniting into a superpower.

But each state has it's own healthcare policies, and many of them are having huge problems that will only get worse.

A lot the economic pressure caused by "social democracies"(moving towards fascism in the EU) has been masked by their central banks as the US economy is being sabotaged by The Federal Reserve, and IMF.

Europe will have to come to grips with this soon, and the solution will be war!

lol don't get me started on the Federal Reserve. This is one of the main reasons why I think Wilson was one of the worst Presidents ever.

[ungar]

lol don't get me started on the Federal Reserve. This is one of the main reasons why I think Wilson was one of the worst Presidents ever.

Money Masters: The History Of The Federal Reserve

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7757684583209015812#

Edited October 22, 2010 by ungar

[Daniel]

The European Union is certainly stronger both economically, and militarily, for uniting into a superpower.

Huh? The US military dwarfs all of the militaries of the EU countries combined. Plus while there is an entity that's generally referred to as the EU Army it is incapable of projecting military power signficantly further beyond it's borders.

It is also not a superpower in any sense of the word.

[ungar]

[matcat1116]

You'll find that every Western European country is ahead of the United States which makes total sense. But here are some countries that don't Colombia, Morocco, Dominica, Costa Rica, Cyprus, and Chile.

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf

International comparisons are few and far between. Such analysis is rare - but not unknown. The WHO' World Health Report 2000, for example, ranks the performance of the health systems of several nations. For proponents of a single payer plan, the WHO is the smoking gun, definitive proof that American health care just doesn't measure up.

What does the WHO find? "In terms of total results, the U.S. health care system ranks 37th in the world, as measured by the WHO, the worst performance of any affluent democratic nation." [13] So writes Dr. Rudolph Mueller, a New York physician, in his book calling for government-run health care. Dr. Mueller considers the WHO finding so revealing that he mentions it on page two.

The WHO study may make for good speaking points, but the work is anything but definitive. Indeed, like a book review written by a biased reviewer, the WHO report says more about those drafting the study than the health care systems that they analyze.

Consider that according to this study, the United States has some of the best doctors and nurses in the world, but has a health care system that ranks behind those of Columbia, Oman, Morocco, Cyprus, Andorra, Malta, and the United Arab Emirates. Now, it would seem that in a proper comparative study, the better systems (that is, say, Columbia rather than the United States) actually boasts the best care. In other words, looking at the WHO report, if your daughter develops a cough late at night, you'd rather take her to a hospital in Bogota or Medellin than in Boston or Memphis.

But before packing up your daughter for the long plane ride to South America, remember that the WHO criteria are soft - and ideological. Nations are marked down for having private medicine or user fees. Fairness - that is, everyone gets the same treatment regardless of income - is important. Competition, WHO officials believe, is bad since it leads to "fragmentation and duplication in health services." If the criteria aren't skewed enough, the WHO report also considers how well countries perform compared to what experts feel they ought to be doing. It's a bit like giving a gold medal to the eighth fastest runner because he has the shortest legs and tried harder.

It is beyond the scope of this paper - or, perhaps, any paper - to attempt to produce a meaningful and comprehensive ranking of different health care systems. A couple of simple conclusions, though, can be made. First, the problem of uninsured citizens is unique to the United States. Canada, Britain, France and Germany may have shortcomings; citizens don't lack basic coverage, however. That type of predicament, however, is not seen in other western countries to the extent it is in the U.S. Second, Americans receive better care than people in any one of those countries - or any other.

The latter point deserves some explanation. Most comparisons confuse health with health care. As a result, much attention is focused on measures like life expectancy. But a good health care system is only one part of life expectancy - indeed, it could be argued that compared to diet, exercise, and genetics, it is less important. But quality health care is all about the treatment of the sick. And looking at various studies comparing treatment-related issues, American health care comes out on top.

http://www.freemarketcure.com/whynotgovhc.php

The World Health Report 2000, prepared by the World Health Organization, presented perfor- mance rankings of 191 nations’ health care sys- tems. These rankings have been widely cited in public debates about health care, particularly by those interested in reforming the U.S. health care system to resemble more closely those of other countries. Michael Moore, for instance, famously stated in his film SiCKO that the United States placed only 37th in the WHO report. CNN.com, in verifying Moore’s claim, noted that France and Canada both placed in the top 10.

Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the rela- tive performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucial- ly on a number of underlying assumptions— some of them logically incoherent, some charac-

terized by substantial uncertainty, and some root- ed in ideological beliefs and values that not every- one shares.

The analysts behind the WHO rankings express the hope that their framework “will lay the basis for a shift from ideological discourse on health policy to a more empirical one.” Yet the WHO rankings themselves have a strong ideolog- ical component. They include factors that are arguably unrelated to actual health performance, some of which could even improve in response to worse health performance. Even setting those concerns aside, the rankings are still highly sensi- tive to both measurement error and assumptions about the relative importance of the components. And finally, the WHO rankings reflect implicit value judgments and lifestyle preferences that dif- fer among individuals and across countries.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp101.pdf

[MantaRay]

We have the single most unqualified man ever in the WH now.

Palin 2112

or

Anyone 2112

MissLeeds makes the perfect pet.

[Daniel]

You'll find that every Western European country is ahead of the United States which makes total sense. But here are some countries that don't Colombia, Morocco, Dominica, Costa Rica, Cyprus, and Chile.

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf

Assuming you wouldn't have to pay a dime for treatment or travel, would you really want to go to a doctor for anything in any of those countries (with the exception of Chile perhaps)? Sure maybe you would want to save a $100 and go to any doctor for a routine physical, but I'd think you'd take on a ton of debt if you had to to get bypass surgery in the US as opposed to Morocco.

To put it another way, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that with whatever statistical/empirical analysis the WHO seems to use, its missing something important if they come to the conclusion that Morocco has a better healthcare system.

[DevsMan84]

Assuming you wouldn't have to pay a dime for treatment or travel, would you really want to go to a doctor for anything in any of those countries (with the exception of Chile perhaps)? Sure maybe you would want to save a $100 and go to any doctor for a routine physical, but I'd think you'd take on a ton of debt if you had to to get bypass surgery in the US as opposed to Morocco.

To put it another way, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that with whatever statistical/empirical analysis the WHO seems to use, its missing something important if they come to the conclusion that Morocco has a better healthcare system.

100% agree and thank you matcat for the articles. WHO is like any organization that runs from the UN, and it tends to be anti-US.