The supporters of government run health care are fond of pointing out that life expectancy in the US is 30th in the world, behind countries with socialist systems. What they don’t tell you is that when you abstract from causes of death that have nothing to do with the health care system, i.e. homicides and accidents, especially car accidents, the numbers are turned on their heads. As reported in Investors Business Daily citing a study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, if you subtract our higher death rates
from accidents and homicide, Americans actually live longer than people
in other countries.
In countries with nationalized care,
medical outcomes are often catastrophically worse. Take breast cancer.
According to the Heritage Foundation, breast cancer mortality in
Germany is 52% higher than in the U.S.; the U.K.?s rate is 88% higher.
For prostate cancer, mortality is 604% higher in the U.K. and 457%
higher in Norway. Colorectal cancer? Forty percent higher in the U.K.
But what about the health care paradise
to our north? Americans have almost uniformly better outcomes and lower
mortality rates than Canada, where breast cancer mortality is 9%
higher, prostate cancer 184% higher and colon cancer 10% higher.
Then there are the waiting lists. With a
population just under that of California, 830,000 Canadians are waiting
to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment. In England, the list
is 1.8 million deep.
