President Discusses Medical Liability Reform

In his discussion of the US health care system President Discusses Medical Liability Reform, Bush said

First, it is important for Americans to understand we have the best health care system in the world.

I decided to see what that statement meant with respect to the actual health of Americans. The Core Health Indicators from the WHR web page provides a form that lets you query WHO health data base. I asked about Healthy Life expectancy at Birth and got the results in the following table.

Country	2002
Andorra	72.2
Australia	72.6
Austria	71.4
Belgium	71.1
Canada	72.0
Denmark	69.8
Finland	71.1
France	72.0
Germany	71.8
Greece	71.0
Iceland	72.8
Ireland	69.8
Israel	71.4
Italy	72.7
Japan	75.0
Luxembourg	71.5
Malta	71.0
Monaco	72.9
Netherlands	71.2
New Zealand	70.8
Norway	72.0
Portugal	69.2
San Marino	73.4
Singapore	70.1
Slovenia	69.5
Spain	72.6
Sweden	73.3
Switzerland	73.2
United Kingdom	70.6
United States of America	69.3

At 69.3 we do a bit better than Portugal (69.2) and worse than Slovenia (69.5) and definitely worse than most of the modern European countries.

How can Bush possibly improve our health care system when he doesn't even know the facts?

But this is a constant refrain. It doesn't matter that Bush has no idea what he's talking about. He seems to have two kinds of people who support him.

• People who don't care what he says. They just like the fact that he says he things like Jesus is his favorite philosopher — and then acts as if Ghengis Khan were his favorite philosopher. They seem to like both of those features of his personality.



• People who benefit personally from his policies. They know that what he says is stupid, but they also know that his policies enrich them personally at the expense of the rest of society — and they seem to like that arrangement.

Between these two groups, Bush has created a functioning majority. Too bad for the country as a whole.