Quote:
Originally Posted by jimjamuser
To compare the health system of one country to another - you need to use INFANT MORTALITY as a yardstick, which is the best measure. So, last time I looked at the world list for infant mortality, the Scandinavian Countries with Universal Health Care were all in the top 10 and the US was down at 20 or 30. That is the only way to compare countries - use an objective measure, not a personal and subjective way.
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The reporting standards are not the same between countries and comparing them tells you very little. If you look at the article below, you'll see that most of the "disadvantage" the US has in IMR disappears when they account for age at birth and birth weight. In fact in the first month, the US has a BETTER IMR than Finland and Austria. It seems that most of the issue with IMR is based on socioeconomic class which drives it down. Most of this happens when the child is home in a poor neighborhood after the first month.
From the National Institute of health.
Why Is Infant Mortality Higher in the United States Than in Europe?
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Cross-country comparisons of aggregate infant mortality rates provide very limited insight, for two reasons. First, a well-recognized problem is that countries vary in their reporting of births near the threshold of viability. Such reporting differences may generate misleading comparisons of how infant mortality varies across countries. Second, even within a comparably-reported sample, the observation that mortality rates differ one year post-birth provides little guidance on what factors are driving the US disadvantage<<<