America: We’re Not Number One!

Prospective House Speaker John Boehner says the Affordable Health Care Act ruins “the best health care system in the world.” Columnist Richard Cohen calls this an “out-of-the-country experience.”

For statistical refutation, we need only refer to the CIA’s World Factbook (no lefty think tank, to be sure) and check the health statistics. The United States is 49th in life expectancy. Our proud nation bests the Libyans in this category but not Japan, France, Spain, Britain or, of course, Italy. You not only live about two years longer in Italy, but you eat better, too.

The same doleful situation applies to infant mortality. This is the saddest of all categories since it relates to infants who don’t make it to their first birthday. The CIA tells us that the nations that do the worst in this category are, not surprisingly, mostly in Africa. Then comes much of Asia and parts of South America, but when you start getting up there a bit, Cuba does better than the United States and so do Italy, Hungary, Greece, Canada, Portugal, Britain, Australia and Israel, among others. This should be an embarrassment to us all – but, clearly, it is not. To Boehner, these figures – infants dying before they can get a cupcake with a single candle – don’t exist. Rather than improve the situation, he might want to cut the CIA’s appropriation.

Looking elsewhere – think tanks, etc. – Boehner might come across a category that health-care expert and former Post reporter T.R. Reid labels “avoidable mortality.” Among the richest nations, the United States is 19th of 19. America is awful at treating asthma, diabetes and kidney disease. If you have any of these, it’s just your bad luck that you’re not Japanese or French . . . or, really, anything other than American.

Almost 51 million Americans who lack health insurance often postpone treatment, going when it’s often too late to emergency rooms and increasing the cost of care. Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, has an equally naive view of how great American health care is; great, that is, if you happen to be a Senator getting socialized government medicine.

When in 2003 he underwent heart bypass surgery, it was at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. This is a government facility staffed by government employees – what is sometimes called socialized medicine. His heart did fine, but he left the hospital untreated for Rampant Endemic Hypocrisy, a communicable disease that has swept the GOP and left it vulnerable to irrationality.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.