Saturday, January 08, 2005

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.

Country2002
Andorra72.2
Australia 72.6
Austria71.4
Belgium71.1
Canada72.0
Denmark69.8
Finland71.1
France72.0
Germany71.8
Greece71.0
Iceland72.8
Ireland69.8
Israel71.4
Italy72.7
Japan75.0
Luxembourg71.5
Malta71.0
Monaco72.9
Netherlands71.2
New Zealand70.8
Norway72.0
Portugal69.2
San Marino73.4
Singapore70.1
Slovenia69.5
Spain72.6
Sweden73.3
Switzerland73.2
United Kingdom70.6
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.

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