BillK wrote:
>
> The World Health Organisation 2000 Report that came out this week should, in
> theory, give us some help in choosing the healthiest places. However I found
> the summary statistics they gave to need so many qualifiers, ifs and buts,
> that it became just interesting reading rather that definitive answers.
> http://www.who.int/whr/
> Overall Health Care top 10..
> 1 France> 2 Italy> 3 San Marino> 4 Andorra> 5 Malta> 6 Singapore> 7 Spain> 8 Oman
> 9 Austria> 10 Japan
>
> The US outspent all other countries at 13.7 per cent of GDP, but was rated
> low because many Americans do not have health insurance. Similarly the US
> average healthy life expectancy was only around 70 (about 4.5 years less
> than countries like France, Austria and Japan). This was because there is a
> group of up to around 10 per cent of Americans who have such poor health
> that their life expectancy drops to around 50 and lowers the overall
> average.
So the ranking is a political attack on our system of health care, and
not an actual evaluation of the health of people. If they are actually
considerin people's actual health, I can see two main reasons for
American's ill health that is completely irrespective of our health care
system: high calorie corn fed diets and high usage of television. I
might also add that demographic breakdowns show that the largest amount
of health care deficits occur in our hispanic immigrant population, a
commentary supporting my assertions of yesterday on the immigration
issue...
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:09 MDT