Grizalltheway wrote:clenz wrote:Ask Michael Moore, or anyone who wants socialized medicine, and the difference may as well be 1st and last.
The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country. Considering that, don't you think that we should be ranked higher than 37th?

We spend more per capita because
1) Americans are much more likely to get MRI's. For that matter, there are more high-tech medical gadgets in American hopsitals per capita than in any other developed nation in the world.
2) We are much more likely to get elective surgieries that aren't life-saving but do give people a higher quality of life. Try getting a hip replacement in Europe. You will wait several years as opposed to several weeks, and that is if the actuary decides you are likely to have enough years left for it to be worthwhile.
Among other things. It's the same reason that Americans spend more per capita on cars than, say, Europeans or Canadians. That's because they are more affordable in America.
The rankings are a crock anyway. You can make whatever kind of criteria you want to skew them any way you want. For example, they use life expectancy but don't correct for the number of obesity and tobacco-related deaths. Also, they count infant mortality rates and don't bother to take into account how infant mortalities are defined nation-by-nation.