Is Our Health Care as Good as We Think?

Among some of the screaming I have heard on TV during news reports of Town Hall Meetings and interviews with mad as hell constituents on the subject of health care in this country are: "If we have such bad health care in this country, why do people from all over the world come here to be taken care of?" and: "who wants to have the proven bad care and waiting times of Canada, England, etc?"

Taking the time to research the truth around these screamings I have found some interesting and disappointing information about our country and how it compares to other countries. Attached Is a listing I have compiled on two statistics that show: We have only the 19th highest life expectancy in the world behind countries such as Japan, Italy, Canada, England, etc, and: we place 20th in the world in mortality rates for infants per 1,000 live births. Maybe we aren't as good as we think and could use some improvement even with all of our great hospitals, research and testing equipment.

LIFE EXPECTANCY 2007
PLACE COUNTRY AGE
1 JAPAN 81.4
AUSTRALIA 80.6
2 SWEDEN 80.6
SWITZERLAND 80.6
5 CANADA 80.3
6 FRANCE 79.9
ITALY 79.9
8 SPAIN 79.8
9 NORWAY 79.7
10 ISRAEL 79.6
11 GREECE 79.4
12 AUSTRIA 79.2
13 GERMANY 79
NEW ZEALAND 79
15 FINLAND 78.7
UNITED KINGDOM 78.7
17 CYPRUS 78
DENMARK 78
UNITED STATES 78

INFANT MORTALITY 2007
PLACE COUNTRY PER 1,000
1 SWEDEN 2.8
2 JAPAN 3.2
3 FINLAND 3.5
4 NORWAY 3.6
5 CZECH REPUBLIC 3.9
6 GERMANY 4.1
7 FRANCE 4.2
8 SPAIN 4.3
SWITZERLAND 4.3
10 AUSTRIA 4.5
DENMARK 4.5
12 AUSTRALIA 4.6
CANADA 4.6
13 PORTUGAL 4.9
14 UNITED KINGDOM 5
15 IRELAND 5.2
16 GREECE 5.3
17 ITALY 5.7
NEW ZEALAND 5.7
19 SOUTH KOREA 6.1
20 UNITED STATES 6.4