Waiting lists, in the six or eight best systems, are virtually non-existent. Nobody - nobody - goes bankrupt in them over medical disaster. Nobody goes untreated. The Canadian system, while not one of the top examples, is rated higher than that in the US. That Canadians who have money sometimes come to the US for treatment is irrelevant; they are not a model the USA is likely to follow. Consider Taiwan, Germany, Britain, Japan, Austria - and see the PBS film "Sick in America" for astonishing comparisons of our own system with those better which cost much less. And meanwhile, kiss goodby to General Motors, who must compete with the rest of the world's automakers while recovering thousan...

Waiting lists, in the six or eight best systems, are virtually non-existent. Nobody - nobody - goes bankrupt in them over medical disaster. Nobody goes untreated. The Canadian system, while not one of the top examples, is rated higher than that in the US. That Canadians who have money sometimes come to the US for treatment is irrelevant; they are not a model the USA is likely to follow. Consider Taiwan, Germany, Britain, Japan, Austria - and see the PBS film "Sick in America" for astonishing comparisons of our own system with those better which cost much less. And meanwhile, kiss goodby to General Motors, who must compete with the rest of the world's automakers while recovering thousands of dollars of health benefits from the price of every car and truck.

Seems to be much bias in the comments above toward systems that Amercans know little about. For instance, the idea that no one goes untreated is flat out wrong. Many people go untreated for long periods of time, many suffer in pain, many times diseases grow worse while waiting for meidcal assistance. In some scenarios the mandates are such that treatment is not given , period. In Japan some hospitals do not even open maternity wards on Saturday. Too bad if you have a baby on that day. Sure, they may not go bankrupt but the quality of care is abyssmal. The procedures under these systems are limited to government mandates and the patient or doctor have little choice to the care provided. It is...

Seems to be much bias in the comments above toward systems that Amercans know little about. For instance, the idea that no one goes untreated is flat out wrong. Many people go untreated for long periods of time, many suffer in pain, many times diseases grow worse while waiting for meidcal assistance. In some scenarios the mandates are such that treatment is not given , period. In Japan some hospitals do not even open maternity wards on Saturday. Too bad if you have a baby on that day. Sure, they may not go bankrupt but the quality of care is abyssmal. The procedures under these systems are limited to government mandates and the patient or doctor have little choice to the care provided. It is often the case that inferior tracts toward curing or fighting a disease are taken because the best tracts are outside the mandated government procedure. In some systems, citizens ( the wealthy) still buy insurance because state-run programs are ineffective or limited.
Many of the crtiteria set up to rate these systems are biased toward the universal nature of the various systems without attention to the effectiveness, innovation, quality of care, medical choice, cleanliness, number of hospitals per citizen, etc, and that is why the US rates low on many of them On the criteria thay matter, there is no doubt that the best healthcare in the world is in the US, by far.

I'm sorry I missed that Frontline episode. As I mentioned in my comment the reason the USA ranks low with the WHO is because of the criteria. The WHO is not measuring quality or effectiveness.

One of the measures the WHO use is life expectency. But that is not a good measure because many things that cause death have nothing to do with healthcare. 1. The number of deaths from car accidents alone in the US is enough to place the US at a disadvantage in these rankings. 2. The homicide rate is 8 to 10 times higher than most European countries and that doesn't have anything to do with healthcare but it is part of WHO's formula. When you remove 'fatal injuries' from WHO's formula the US has the h...

I'm sorry I missed that Frontline episode. As I mentioned in my comment the reason the USA ranks low with the WHO is because of the criteria. The WHO is not measuring quality or effectiveness.

One of the measures the WHO use is life expectency. But that is not a good measure because many things that cause death have nothing to do with healthcare. 1. The number of deaths from car accidents alone in the US is enough to place the US at a disadvantage in these rankings. 2. The homicide rate is 8 to 10 times higher than most European countries and that doesn't have anything to do with healthcare but it is part of WHO's formula. When you remove 'fatal injuries' from WHO's formula the US has the highest life expectency in the world, including Japan.
Also, another measure of the WHO formula was how 'faitrly' care is distributed. This means fairness in distribution is weighted heavier than quality. Fairness is a very subjective way to measure quality or medical care. It is meaningless in the overall scheme of actual healthcare.

The US is the absolute best, and no one else is even close, when it comes to quality, effectiveness, life extension, innovation, drug development, and curing and managing disease.