Ooo – Universal Healthcare Proponents Aren’t Going To Like This

So, you know how people who are in favor of universal healthcare/single payer/socialized medicine always point to the World Health Organization as the source of data which demonstrates why we should move in that direction?

Well, check out the April edition of Commentary magazine. There’s an article called The Worst Study Ever? by Scott Atlas, and while it’s not available on line just yet, my dad pdf’d it for me.

The column completely demolishes the credibility of the WHO, and proves how ranking the US 37th out of 191 nations in “overall performance” is completely absurd. For me, and I’m sure lots of others of you out there, this isn’t news. No one in their right mind should believe for a second that the US healthcare system isn’t the best in the world. Scott Atlas describes the 2000 WHO report as “an intellectual fraud of historic consequence – a profoundly deceptive document that is only marginally a measure of healthcare performance at all. The report’s true achievement was to rank countries according to their alignment with a specific political and economic ideal – socialized medicine – and then claim it was an objective measure of ‘quality.’”

Ouch. That’s not going to go over well with Obama, who pointed to the data from that very report when he said, “29 other countries have a higher life expectancy and 38 other nations have lower infant mortality rates.” Basically, as the article goes on to demonstrate, that is a huge pile of crap.

So, here are the five factors that the WHO used to come up with its rankings.

*Health Level – (25% of overall care)
*Health Distribution – (25% of overall care)
*Responsiveness (12.5% of overall care)
*Responsiveness Distribution (12.5% of overall care)
*Financial Fairness (25% of overall care)

It gets really interesting when the WHO provides definitions for those “measures.” Responsiveness, for example, is calculated in part by “respect for persons.” Yeah. That’s objective, isn’t it?

And with respect to Financial Fairness, the WHO study reported that, “The way healthcare is financed is perfectly fair if the ratio of total health contribution to total non-food spending is identical for all households, independently of their income, their health status, or their use of the health system.” In other words, the WHO openly advocated, in its study, for wealth distribution. And in fact, wealth distribution was used by the WHO as a measure of quality. So, “capitalist countries that rely more on market incentives” were moved to the bottom of the list while countries which use single payer systems were rewarded, regardless of ACTUAL OUTCOMES. “Health Distribution” and “Responsiveness Distribution” didn’t have JACK SQUAT to do with actual quality of healthcare, it turns out, only equal distribution. In fact, over SIXTY PERCENT of the entire ranking came from an assessment of EQUALITY, instead of QUALITY. Actual health outcomes? Those only counted for 25% of the score.

And let’s just look at those actual outcomes, as measured by the WHO. The WHO ranked the US 42nd in life expectancy. And you know what they included in their analysis? MURDERS AND HIGH SPEED CAR ACCIDENT VICTIMS. I’m not making this up. Amazingly, as soon as you remove those incidents from the report – the US ranks number one. SURPRISE!

I mean, seriously. Murders? They’re going to use MURDERS as a measure of the performance of the US healthcare system?!? REALLY?

Worse yet, the WHO’s study failed basic scientific rigor by not going through a satisfactory peer-review process. Out of the 32 references cited by the study, 26 were from inside the WHO itself.

And there are dozens more examples of how incredibly deceptive the entire study is. The problem is that OUR GOVERNMENT used the study to justify “imposing radical changes to America’s healthcare system, even in the face of objections from American people.”

This should concern EVERYONE, both conservatives and liberals alike, that the very leaders we vote for and entrust to make good policy decisions based on accurate data, would use this kind of propaganda to potentially destroy the best healthcare system in the entire world. As the author says, “To blur the line between politics and objective analysis is to do violence to them both.”

So, the next time you hear some liberal spouting off WHO stats, be sure to send them a link to this post.

UPDATE: Now you can read the entire Commentary Article, re-pdf’d for us by C Steven Tucker! And make sure to check out this article on infant mortality rates too!