I wish people would stop saying things like this. From the description for AEI's new book on health care:
America's health-care system is the envy of the world, but it faces serious challenges.
No, no it's not. The developed world is packed with better health care systems than ours while the developing world knows it wouldn't be covered under our incarnation, it'd have to turn towards our Medicaid/Medicare attempts to copy European systems that they could simply covet instead. Much easier to slice out the middle man there and just envy France.
In fact, Americans don't even want our health care system. It's not like we can't dig up numbers on this. Indeed, you just have to surf over to PollingReport for the polls:
"Canada has a universal health care system run by the government that covers all people. Compared to Canada, do you think the overall health care system in the United States is better, worse or about the same?"
Better: 29%
Worse: 37%
Same: 23%
Unsure: 11%
For those struggling with the numbers, "Canada Rocks!" is clearly in the lead. As for the book, it couldn't look hackier. By stamping down on anticompetitive behaviors and reforming the way we tax, we'll save $60 billion and make health care more affordable, thus extending it to 6 million or so folks who don't already have it. That every other industrialized nation boasts full coverage for significantly less is the sort of thing that doesn't make it onto the dust jacket. This is wonkishness with blinders. What makes it so irritating is that these guys know all this. They know Americans aren't satisfied with our care, they know our health system is widely thought regressive, they know single-payer delivers better results for less money. But with ideological tunnel vision and selective statistics, they make the opposite case.
If our health care system was the envy of the world, other nations would duplicate it. That, instead, all those who can afford first world systems have copied the European model really says all you need to know.
