An article on NHS in Britain

[eagleair89]

at least in one area, the NHS seems to be struggling:

BBC NEWS | Health | NHS dystrophy care 'inadequate'

WAR EAGLE

[WDG]

Maybe this is the reason the Brits pay less.

[xaff]

The World Health Organization's last ranking of the world's health system.

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
<...>
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
<...>
37 United States of America

Facts n stuff.

[WDG]

The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task.

[xaff]

WDG .. that's why I said in the last one. Ok. Here's a very recent one. A very nice barometer is the Infant Mortality rate.

Infant mortality rate (deaths/1,000) ↓ Under-five mortality rate (deaths/1,000 ) ↓
1 Iceland 2.9 3.9
2 Singapore 3.0 4.1
3 Japan 3.2 4.2
4 Sweden 3.2 4.0
5 Norway 3.3 4.4
6 HK 3.7 4.7
7 Finland 3.7 4.7
8 Czech 3.8 4.8
9 Switzerland 4.1 5.1
10 South Korea 4.1 4.8
11 Belgium 4.2 5.3
12 France 4.2 5.2
13 Spain 4.2 5.3
14 Germany 4.3 5.4
15 Denmark 4.4 5.8
16 Austria 4.4 5.4
17 Australia 4.4 5.6
18 Luxembourg 4.5 6.6
19 Netherlands 4.7 5.9
20 Israel 4.7 5.7
21 Slovenia 4.8 6.4
22 United Kingdom 4.8 6.0
23 Canada 4.8 5.9
24 Ireland 4.9 6.2
25 Italy 5.0 6.1
26 Portugal 5.0 6.6
27 New Zealand 5.0 6.4
28 Cuba 5.1 6.5
29 Channel Islands ( Jersey and Guernsey) 5.2 6.2
30 Brunei 5.5 6.7
31 Cyprus 5.9 6.9
32 New Caledonia 6.1 8.7
33 United States 6.3 7.8

[xaff]

The same statistics done by CIA Factbook actually rates US even worse than the one done by UN (in the above post).

The essence of the story is .. that while no health care is perfect, and while NHS has it's shortcomings its LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than the 'average' that Americans get. Obviously you will see critics of NHS, or Canadian social insurance, or even those on the top of that list. Nobody's perfect.

This is like criticizing someone who got one C (and rest all As and Bs) while your own kid got all Ds and a couple of Fs (and one A).

And you are paying twice as much (US government Per capita health care spending) compared to the parent of the kid that got all As and one C. You are also paying a LOT in extra coaching (US public's per capita health insurance costs) but your son just keep getting Ds and Fs.