Did anyone notice the recently announced rankings of infant mortality by the World Health Organization? The United States dropped from 29th to 41st in the world.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the medical director of NBC News described the new ranking as "disturbing", "shocking" and "appalling". She stated that this basic indicator of our healthcare system is nothing to be ignored or explained away. The statistic is a fundamental measure of the quality of healthcare for the entire population of the countries measured, not just those who can afford better.

In an interview on The Nightly News last week she said,

"The evidence tonight is in the numbers, and the numbers are not very pretty. expect developed countries to do well when it comes to infant morality, but not necessarily. Take a look at the countries that are usually at the top of the heap. They include Japan, Singapore, and France. They're always consistent in the top tier. But, now, look at this: Cuba, Malaysia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, they are ahead of the United States, which now ranks 41st in infant mortality, and that's a real concern because really we spend more money per capita for health care in this country, and those are the results. No matter how you massage those numbers, we were ranked 29th five years ago. No way to paint this in a good way.

This is dismal and, frankly, appalling."

It seems to me that given the fact that we spend more than twice as much on healthcare than any other developed country in the world, that anyone who continues to defend the American healthcare system is simply not considering the facts.