Quality of health care

One of the "facts" that has been bandied about is that the U.S. is ranked 37th in health care in the world by the World Health Organization (WHO). This was a study done in 2000. However, this is not a true measure of the quality of health care in a country. It takes into account the distribution of health care and responsiveness (see here). It also doesn't take in other factors that affect longevity. And even longevity is not a careful enough item; we really are concerned about quality lives. I suspect that much of the U.S. rank is due to the fact that so many people do not have access to health care in this country. There seems to be consensus that we have the best physician training and the best from around the world come here for training. As in any profession, some doctors are better than others, but overall I'll bet we have the best. And we have the best technology available. Still, there are areas for improvement. Atul Gawande has written about how the secrecy of results in hospital care has thwarted improvements. Some of the comparative effectivenss studies could address this as well as cost. And certainly France and Germany, where citizens have their entire history digitized on their health care card, provide a better system of record-keeping. If you want a very different slant on the issue, check out a recent article in The Atlantic. Rating quality is a complicated issue and I'm not expert. But I think the issue of health care costs is even more complicated.