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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (16277)	4/7/2010 8:37:28 AM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

how about choosing the criteria that would be a good comparison and make a judgement. Getting rid of categories other than "health level" and "responsiveness" would be a good step in the right direction. The others don't tell us a thing about the quality of health care. If WHO wants to make political statements, they should do so separately. Then health level should be analyzed for its components and the data adjusted for non-health-care factors and varying accounting criteria across countries.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (16277)	4/7/2010 11:49:01 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I think that rankings are overrated. And to the extent they are meaningful even if the ranking system is pretty good, you wouldn't necessarily look at a higher ranking country and say we should copy them, or a lower ranking country and say we have nothing to learn from them. But if you are going to have rankings I think Lane's comments here Message 26442897 would be a good start. You would also need to try to make sure your really measuring what you claim to be measuring. Measure the health insurance system, or the medical care system, or the combination, but not all sorts of other things that have health impacts. And why I think attempts from organizations like WHO to rank countries in this way shouldn't be political statements, if your actually choosing what system to put in place in a country politics is inevitably and properly an important component of the effort, both in the obvious terms that it has to pass through the political system, but also in the sense that one's political ideas help determine what ideas it is a good idea to implement. If some system would produce better health care outcomes but would result in more taxes and spending, or would have some other impact that people might see as negative, the proper answer isn't just "does this improve healthcare", you have to make a tradeoff between the different issues. Your political ideas determine your opinion of the proper balance in this tradeoff.