“Life expectancy in the US is still 50/51st in the world after all those death panel socialist countries.”
The U.S. has the highest life expectancy in the world once you remove violent deaths, i.e., deaths due to auto accidents, homicides, suicides, injuries etc. Violent deaths may say something about the state of U.S. society, but they aren’t a particularly good indicator of the quality of our health care system.
We likewise lead the world in cancer survival rates for a broad range of cancers, and are consistently in the the top 3 countries in survival rates for newborns in various low birthweight categories (the only countries that beat us are small Scandinavian countries with far more homogenous—and generally healthier, lifestyle-wise—populations.
If it truly were the case that the best medical care were abroad, we would see wealthy high-profile patients such as Ted Kennedy or Tom Daschle’s brother going to Canada or Europe to get complicated brain surgeries. We would see high-level officials in Canada remaining in their own country for free care rather than flying to the U.S. and paying out of pocket to obtain better quality care.
In short, the life expectancy figures are a highly misleading indicator of where the U.S. health care system really stands in terms of overall performance.
And the best perinatal mortality once you remove the crack babies and the homicides.