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"Since the fascist dictators of WWII were famous for having the trains running on time, would you advocate chaning our system to mirror theirs so that we can compete? "

You're a teacher? That's pretty sad, considering you didn't even understand my post. I didn't advocate changing anything. On the contrary, I merely stated the facts and said that even though that was the case we still had the country where opportunity was greatest, and that's why people flock here.

You said, "Poppycock" to my comment about America ranking 19th in healthcare in developed nations. Next time do some research (you are a teacher, right?). 1) The Cigna health insurance website says that "The United States ranks 26th among all developed nations in terms of infant mortality". 2) the National Conference of State Legislature website says, "The United States ranks 21st out of 27 countries in infant mortality; 17th for life expectancy of women; and 21st for life expectancy of men of the 29 developed countries." 3) The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th in healthcare provided for its citizens.

I gave you some facts and figures. Next time you choose to editorialize, you might try doing the same. It's nice to make a statement like, "However, I'd bet my home that the US is #1, by a wiiiiide margin, in providing healthcare to the world's poor", but it's meaningless if you don't have any data to back it up.

World Infant mortality rates

You need to be reminded that there is far more to analysis than simply accepting statistics at face value. On the linked page, Czech Republic, Iceland, Leichenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Singapore, and Slovenia all top the US in Infant mortality, but no one in their right mind believes that the health care in those places is better than US healthcare.

There's a reason that this statistic is misleading, and as I posted before, the reason lies in the way that the definitions are made. "Infant mortality" is defined as the number of deaths of children under 12 months per 1000 live births. For the non-analytically-minded, this is a straight-forward statistic, since they do not consider the differences between the nations themselves. Those above nations have low infant mortality rates most likely because sickly fetuses simply do not survive gestation or the birthing process. In the US, we rescue 16-week-old cocaine-addicted fetuses and actually try to make them viable. Those that do not make it to their first birthday bring down our infant mortality rate. In almost any other nation, they would never have been encouraged to survive to become a statistic. Our exceedingly wonderful medical science community directly contributes to our statistic's "poor" ranking. Of course, this ranking is in the top 10% worldwide, and within three-tenths of one percent of all births of being #1... yet this somehow becomes a "crisis" thanks to those who parrot these numbers without any cogent analytical thinking, implying that we need to be more like Singapore, Slovenia, and/or the Czech Republic for some strange reason. This kind of point-blank substitution of statistical citation for thoughtful analysis is what I dislike.

'1) The Cigna health insurance website says that "The United States ranks 26th among all developed nations in terms of infant mortality".'

Hmm. Could this be because NOT every mother in the USA automatically kills her unborn child when the amniocentesis shows there might be something wrong?
By the way, quotation marks go OUTSIDE the period.

'17th for life expectancy of women; and 21st for life expectancy of men of the 29 developed countries'

Would have to know what this crap is based on before I could comment.

"The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th in healthcare provided for its citizens"

Sounds like this means we have a higher percentage of people who PAY FOR THEIR OWN healthcare, as opposed to us giving it to everyone, regardless of their need to get it free.