Some house-guests arrived sometime after midnight Thursday night  —  the night of the bizarre VP debate  —  and of course before anyone could go to bed we had to spend an hour or so arguing about politics. (They’re liberal sorts.)
Healthcare came up. So did the alleged “fact” that the healthcare system of the  U.S.A. is ranked 37th in the world.
You hear this often. It’s based on a notorious report by the World Health Organization, and it’s utter rubbish. Fully two-thirds of the score used in the rankings has nothing to do with actual health, but with how each nation rates on purely ideological metrics, such as whether the system is funded according to a sufficiently progressive policy of income redistribution. The rest is made up of manipulative jiggery-pokery. For example, the U.S.A. is ranked a lowly 19th in life expectancy. Take away death from fatal injuries, however, and we’re number 1. (How my driving my car off a cliff, or being shot, is any reflection on our healthcare system is not explained.) Our low ranking in infant mortality turns out to be due to the fact that we actually try to save a great many babies that would simply be recorded as “stillborn” elsewhere. If they persist for a few days and die, into the infant mortality stats they go. And so on.
Writing at Commentary, Scott W. Atlas, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center, explains just how bad this oft-cited “study” really is.