The WHO ranking is based on life expectancies, inequalities in health, responsiveness of the system in providing diagnosis and treatment, inequalities in responsiveness and how fairly systems are financed.

I'm not sure if it's included in the rankings, but the US also has a maternal mortality rate that's higher than Japan, Canada, Germany, Greece, the UK, Belgium, etc. You know, all the countries with the scary universal health care.

Maybe if you live in Wheeling. Go to an ER in a city and expect to wait a few hours at least.

I love how people can talk about how the US is so much better in health care and just ignore the actual FACTS that show how bad it really is. Oh, and one anecdote about a friend doesn't count for much. How many Americans have friends who have died waiting for treatment, or gotten worse while waiting to be seen by a doctor? How many Americans don't go to the doctor AT ALL or don't buy medications because they can't afford it?

You make it sound like people in Canada are dying all over the place because the treatment is so awful, but the truth is they have better life expectancies than we do.

We too could set medical practice back 30 years by adopting the same health care system (for a measely 50+% of our gross income) if we want, but who really wants to go back when we can step forward?

Medication is expensive, but it also has to cover research toward new medicines. Unlike the rest of the world, we don't copy what the 87% of all new medications that U.S. discovers through trial and error, we ARE the U.S. discovering it, and someone has to pay for it.

Do we really want to pay 50% of our income in taxes just to have "free" health care? Comparing the U.S. to Canada is like comparing pineapples to tur****. Any of us can walk into a hospital with chest pains and be seen in a reasonable amount of time. A friend of mine's mother who lives outside of Peterborough, ON, Canada, went to the hospital with the same symptons. She waited 9 hours before being seen by a nurse, and was there 26 hours before being seen by a physician. Then, was given a prescription and given an appointment with a cardiologist for 11 weeks later. While waiting for that appointment, she had a heart attack, a stroke, and nearly died before being rushed again to the hospital. This time she spent 6 hours waiting to be seen and was finally admitted to a hospital in Toronto, ON as all the nearby hospitals had neither the equipment or space for her. Is this what we want in the U.S.?

First, the war in Iraq is expensive, but at the same time provides jobs to our families that have an income of nearly $900 million a week. So nearly half of the expenses of the war effort are payroll, both the soldiers and those jobs here making equipment and ammunition.

My comment wasn't about anyone not being responsible. It was about Americans thinking their medicines are safer than in other countries. I don't think most Americans realize our medicines contain ingredients that come from other countries. Including China, and we know China has a sketchy history with safety and quality.

Where is my reasoning faulty?

A vast majority of Americans (88%) are confident that prescription drugs made in the United States are safe. In contrast, only 56% think that drugs made in Canada and Europe are safe, and only 14% think that drugs made in China and India are safe. Many of the drugs sold in the United States are made in China and India*, Thurber noted.

*more than 80% of ingredients used to make drugs sold in the United States come from overseas, with almost half of that coming from India and China.

The cost of medicine is skyrocketing because big pharma controls it all. We're not paying extra for "safety."

What Americans should be sick of is a patient suing and being awarded 500 x their personal life's worth just because the patient is not satisfied with the result of a procedure or a doctor displayes a moment of humanity and (gasp)makes an error that most of the time can be corrected without major complication.

Secondly, it is not that we do not know what we need, but referrals and HMOs were created to reduce insurance fraud, thus, controlling health care costs.

As for overbooked physicians, there is a physician shortage in most parts of the U.S. A couple of reasons for this is that malpractice insurance rates coupled with the number of lawsuits and jury awards are skyrocketing and most of the times do not offer a physician much incentive to practice medicine in certain areas.

Tort reform is the first step in the fight to control outrageous health care costs.

A lot of Americans are sick of this. Doctors are so overbooked and can't time the amount of time with each patient that's needed, because there are so many other patients waiting. How ridiculous is it that you have to wait to see your pcp to get a referral to wait and see a spe******t? We can't be trusted to know what we need. And how ridiculous is it to tell someone who desperately needs help, oh, you need to wait six months to see a psychiatrist and by the way, your insurance will only pay for you to see him or her six times this year, no matter how often you need to?

Back to topic, as for health care, I personally do not want to wait forever in line to see a doctor and then have him or her give me 1/2 a *s * s care.

Furthermore, I do not see socialized medicine in our future until there is half decent health care reform beginning with the courts. Capping awards and providing medical providers with more protection from frivolous lawsuits would be a great start. If doctors were to be employees of the federal government, imagine the mess that would be made (not to mention the additional costs) if people were now suing the government as well for medical malpractice.

Respondeat superior (Latin for "let the master answer) is a legal doctrine which states that, in many circumstances, an employer is responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their employment.

Other factors that most do not consider when they discuss the high price of health care is frivolous lawsuits that clog the courts and the astrological amounts that are awarded to people when they sue. It is ridiculous when a person gets awarded 500% times their actual lifetime earnings (depending on what they could have earned) and not their actual lifetime earnings (if applicable) plus medical expenses. That would be reasonable. Two words - Tort Reform.-

And another thing, health care costs are not breaking GM, but the workers who want the stars and beyond and Japanese who are making better cars than we are.