Thursday, September 3, 2009

My SodaHead Responses on Health Care

Does it seem odd that some people put down the US health care system by saying that it ranks 37th and yet they celebrate Canada's system which ranks 30th? Hardly sounds like much of an improvement and hardly looks like a model for the US. Netherlands ranks much higher and uses compulsory private insurance. Sounds like a much better model than the single payor public system in Canada and UK. One good thing about the Canadian system, however, seems to be that as a confederation, provinces have more autonomony and there is not a single Federal health insurance system-there is provincial control.

Odd that the Canadians are complaining about their low, 30th, ranking due to questionable criteria in the WHO ranking. And WHO is currently revising their methodology and withholding new rankings until they better address issues with the criteria. Rankings are always suspect. My point is that ranking 37th is not really that bad when Canada ranks 30th, Australia 32nd, Denmark 34th.

It seems to me that it is the utmost of arrogance to think that the US is #1 in everything or should be. In the first place, WHO has given up rating countries on health care because of the complexity involved. In the second place, their posted rankings are now 9 years old. In the 3rd place, I don't mind being ranked in the same area as Australia, Denmark, Costa Rica, New Zealand-all these countries have great health care. But, most importantly is this-it is not that I am against universal health care, I am just against Obama's public option. He said it best himself-"FedEx and UPS don't have a problem, the Post Office has a problem." If he would drop his silly subborn idealogical partisian insistence on the public option, health care would have a much better chance of passing. Netherlands, Germany, and many other countries who rank much higher than Canada on health care have compulsory PRIVATE insurance. Regulate private insurance. Don't put out another inefficient, ineffective, bureaucratic, government run piece of crap legislation.

The top 8 countries are: France, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Malta, Singapore, Spain, Oman. Congratulations to Andorra, Oman et al but I don't really want to live in any of those countries. You want the US to rank with Malta?

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