@Blickers,
Blickers wrote:
That almost sounds OK, george, but the facts are that life expectancy at birth is a pretty fair indicator both of a health care system and standard of living generally, and we rank 43rd. Granted that many of the "countries" ahead of us are little more than the size of counties or cities, we are still behind a huge portion of the wealthy countries in this statistic, most of which have tens of millions of people. Not to mention we are behind the entire EU taken as a whole, which illustrates that we are slipping, since much of the EU is composed of nations newly freed from the Soviet tether. Yet the EU is ahead of us, and even the Czech Republic, former Soviet vassal state, is not far behind us. Almost all these countries ahead of us, large or small, have a centralized health care system designed to give roughly equal health care to all.
This is a standard canard for those obsessed with government managed health care . It is mostly nonsense and propaganda, and it indicates a treatment of statistical data that is laughably inept and stupid.
If you want to make this case you must first recognize that the signifiucant information is not in the ranking, but in the numerical values of the data and the size of the populations involved, (which you did not include). Furthermore you must consider other factors which may apply, and which are suggested by the data,
About 18 of the 60 countries on your list have fewer than 10 million in their populations and distort the rankings. The first pace country on your list, Monaco, has a life expectancy 5 years greater than the 2nd place one immediately behind it - by far the biggest, one step difference on your list. Stepping down the next 5 years takes you all the way to #43, the United States. Monaco is hardly a model for social welfare - rather an ecample of private wealth. What "lesson" does that have for us?
Sweden's life expectancy is listed as 81.98, that is 2.9% greater than the U.S., but note that neighboring Denmark, also a Scandanavian country with a universal health care system and very restrictive immigration rules like Sweden has a life expectancy of 79.25 years, 3.3% less than Sweden and 0.5% less than the US. What accounts for that???
A telling point can be made by comparing the data for four of the most advanced countries in Europe, Italy, France, Germany and the UK. All have government mandated health care systems and modern standards comparable to those in the U.S. Italy, a country with systems and infrastructure generally regarded as less well run than those of the others leads lin life expectancy with 81.17 years. France in 0.5% behind; Germany 1.9% behind; and the UK, with a much vaunted health care system often held up as a model for us, lags by 2%. That's twice the relative difference between the U.S. and the UK.
All this tells us there are other variables at work here including culture, lifestyle, diet and very likely the levels of immigration involved - factors that don't appear at all in your data or apparently your "analysis".
Your claim about the EU and the data for the frormer Soviet states is misleading. Usuing your data EU life expectancy is 80.2 years. That's 0.7% or three weeks greater than in this country - a difference dwarfed by those within the EU (and about one quarter the difference between neighboring Sweden and Denmark) and simply not statistically significant given all the other variables obviously operating here. The Czech Republic is 1.5% behind us, and Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slvakia, and Slovenia are not on your list and presumably farther behind. Shall I conclude from that that Socialism had adverse efffects on health and life expectancy that linger even a generation after it is abandoned?
There's more to this subject than looking stuff on the internet. It is also necessary to measure, compare and (gasp!) think about what you find.
