During June the World Health Organisation issued a report ranking the health-care systems of countries throughout the world from best to worst. France topped the list and America came in at 37th place – just below Costa Rica and fully 15 places below Colombia.
Health-care experts question whether the list should be taken seriously at all. At the very least they ask, “What’s going on here?”
An example has been suggested. Imagine two societies, both with 20,000 people who will die without a heart operation. In one society, no such operations are done. In the second, 10,000 operations are performed on the half of the population that is most able to pay for them. Which society has the better health-care system?
From the fairness point of view, the former system – in which everyone died prematurely – is clearly superior. It is no consolation to a patient receiving inferior treatment that everyone else is being just as poorly cared for as he is. So absolute fairness is a quality that is inimical to medical progress and innovation.
WHO does admit that the U.S. system is the most responsive in the world to the wishes of individual patients.
Source: Theodore Dalrymple, “’Fair’ Health Care Isn’t Always Best,” Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2000.
For text (WSJ subscription)
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB962148044373053030.htm
For WHO text http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html
For more on International Health Care http://www.ncpa.org/pi/health/hedex16.html
