Mafigator, I just found out what the OECD is.
The "Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development."
I'lll cite something from FoxNews.com in rebuttal.
It will have the same level of excellence.
Don't your professors teach you to hunt for date that has a bibliography of sources?
Thanks for the chuckle.

@ Putin33

Yes, but who got into the air first?

!?! You just heard of the OECD today? And you're arguing about social economic issues like this?
And you're comparing it to Fox News?
The OECD is a well respected, credible organization, committed to the market economy. Not some wishy washy left wing think tank, like you seem to think.

Also you don't get to decide the only way we're measuring quality of health care. And even if I did, for the sake of argument concede, the point that only cancer survival rates matter, my data show that the US is only slightly better than other countries in terms of the death rate from cancer, AND you still haven't responded to the claim that Sweden, Norway and Finland all have LOWER death rates due to cancer than the US.

How do you respond to the high rates of death due to ischemic heart disease?

Also, how do you respond to the higher infant mortality rate in the US? Infant mortality is a very good measure of the quality of heath care in a country, whatever you might like to believe.

And even if there are problems with using figures like number of doctors per 1000, or availability of hospital beds, they still mean SOMETHING. You can't simply push those figures aside saying "Oh numbers don't matter." Either evidence matters or it doesn't. You can't say "Oh let's look at the evidence and decide what's best. But the only evidence we're looking at is the data I provide. And anything that isn't what I decide is important will be thrown out." What kind of a debate is that?

OK Tettleton. Also, I just re-read what you said about the OECD's reliability and I understand where your skepticism comes from. They don't cite their sources.
I just facepalmed. They reason they don't cite other sources, is because the OECD is a primary source. They're not getting these statistics from elsewhere and then analyzing them, they get their data directly from the statistical agencies of member nations, and then standardize them so that they can be compared across countries.

On the subject of comparative infant mortality rates.
The United States counts any baby breathing on its own as a live birth regardless of birth weight.
There is no comparable standard around the globe.
Some countries do not count babies born with a low birthweight, below 4lbs, as a live birth and if that baby dies it doesn't show up in infant mortality rates.
Other countries classify babies who die within the first 24 hours as miscarriages instead of live births so those births do not count in their infant mortality rates.
Another factor is the age of the mother.
Younger mothers have more risk of infant death.
The United States has a lower average age of birthing mothers than almost any other industrialized country.
No table that you see takes into account these varying definitions of live birth and infant mortality in their statistics.

Infant mortality rate is a favorite statistic of statists who have unbounded self-confidence in government bureaucrats to run society though.
Infant mortality is a meaningless statistics among intellectuals seeking truly comparative categories though.

"No table that you see takes into account these varying definitions of live birth and infant mortality in their statistics." - The OECD statistics account for differences like that. In fact, that's almost entirely the point of the OECD. That discrepancy is not at play here. Nice try.

As I've said before, reality has a well known liberal bias. :)

Really Mafia? I clicked on the one link at the bottom of that table of aggregate data and it was dead.
If you have the literature associated with the study that shows how those varying characteristics of relating to the recording of infant mortality was integrated into the table you linked to please provide it.

No no no. You misunderstand me. The entire point of the OECD is that it aggregates data from member nations, and codifies it so that it is standardized and thus actually meaningfully comparable between different countries. I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't actually have proof the the OECD did that in this case. But given that that is the entire point of their statistics department, it would be kinda silly if they did that with all the other information and forgot to do it with the infant mortality data.

The link wasn't dead for me. When I clicked on it, it led me to a website where I could download the raw data which they aggregated to make this table from their database. Unfortunately it didn't say anything about their methodologies in this case, however they're usually pretty good about noting anything which would skew the data, in footnotes. I realize you won't buy this for a second. But humour me for a moment. For the sake of argument, concede the point that the data is standardized and thus comparable, how do you answer that point? And do you have a response for any of my other points?

Also Tettleton's Chew, this entire infant mortality debate is based on something you said which isn't even true.
You claimed the US standard for a live birth is unique but in fact according to the US centre for disease control Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden and the UK all use the same standard for reporting infant mortality.. The only European countries which do not use the same reporting standards for infant mortality are France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Poland.
According to this same CDC report, part of the reason for the difference in infant mortality rate is the high number of premature births in the US, however even if you exclude births at less than 22 weeks, to control for this variable the US still had an infant mortality rate (5.8 per 1000 live births) higher than every country in Europe except for Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic. This more than doubled the rate for Norway and Sweden (both 3.0 per 1000 live births). Even if you control for the different distribution of perterm births to compare Sweden to the US, by adjusting the gestational age of births to match Sweden's, you still find the US has an infant mortality rate of 3.9, compared to Sweden's 3.0. The report concluded that "The United States compares favorably with Europe in the survival of infants born preterm. Infant mortality rates for preterm infants are lower in the United States than in most European countries. However, infant mortality rates for infants born at 37 weeks of gestation or more are generally higher in the United States than in European countries." The report also concluded "There are some differences among countries in the reporting of very small infants who may die soon after birth. However, it appears unlikely that differences in reporting are the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking. In 2005, 22 countries had infant mortality rates of 5.0 or below. One would have to assume that these countries did not report more than one-third of their infant deaths for their infant mortality rates to equal or exceed the U.S. rate. This level of underreporting appears unlikely for most developed countries."

So your argument that different countries reporting differently on infant mortality accounts for the difference is not born out by the American Center for Disease Control. They freely admit that the US has a higher infant mortality rate than "most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Israel."

Nor does the CDC agree with your assertion that real intellectuals don't look at infant mortality as an indicator of health. The report I'm referring to opens with the sentence "Infant mortality is an important indicator of the health of a nation".

If you'd like to read the CDC report, you can find it here.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.htm

So. I must ask you once again. How do you account for the fact that the US has one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed countries?

Here is an excellent article on the problem of undercounting in infant mortality.

Global Infant Mortality: Correcting for Undercounting
The authors believe they have developed a methodology to account for undercounting. They recognize the political bias that drives undercounting as well.

http://econ.duke.edu/Econ/Faculty/Users/cbecker_files/papers/Anthopolos-Becker_infant_mortality_IUSSP_2009.pdf

Quick quote from the abstract.

Prior research has shown that infant mortality rates can be underestimated dramatically, depending on a particular country’s live birth criterion, vital registration system, and reporting practices. These problems are especially great for perinatal mortality...

Here is another paper with a section dealing with the problem of comparative infant mortality.

Methodologies for Adjustments to Infant Mortality Estimates
Dennis Donahue ,U.S. Census Bureau ,Population Division

Unfortunately, our understanding of infant mortality at the global level continues to be limited by two major problems, underreporting and incomparability.
Despite efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, standards and
definitions are not consistent (or consistently followed), resulting in further uncertainty
about our ability to estimate, much less compare, the level of infant mortality across
regions.

Also, since this will appeal to you, I will for the sake of argument, concede the point. I will only, in this post, discuss cancer. Looking at a study published in 2008, we can see that the US has some of the highest 5 year survival rates, rates which were often comparable, or in fact beaten by Cuba, Canada, and occasionally Japan, Austria and France, depending on the type of cancer in question.
However it is clear that with the exception of Cuba (which is also a point you'll have to answer for, while arguing that public health care is a bad idea) the US had the highest 5 year survival rate for cancers overall. That said Australia, Austria, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland all have lower rates of mortality due to cancer. This is obviously due to their lower cancer incidence rates. The ConcordCancer study which concluded that the US had some of the highest 5 year survival rates for cancer patients had this to say on the subject of incidence vs survival rates:
"The comparability of cancer survival estimates between countries is criticised far more often than the comparability of cancer incidence data from the same registries. There is no statistical basis for this distinction. National sensitivities about cancer survival seem to be much greater than sensitivities about cancer incidence. Cancer survival is a measure of the overall effectiveness of cancer treatment services, whereas cancer incidence is a measure of the long-term effect of prevention policies, which are less visible on a day-to-day basis and can, incorrectly, be seen as less important."
In other words, the difference is not that Europe is doing nothing about cancer. The results in terms of the number of people who die from cancer are comparable, if not better. You claim only results matter, well, the relative number of people (as a proportion of the population) dying of cancer is no better than the European average, and yet American health care costs much much more. To maintain that the US model is still worth the greater amount of money, you'll either need to argue that cure is a better standard of care than prevention (and I've seen cancer treatments in action, that's a difficult case to make), or that preventative measures aren't health measures. I don't think you can make either of those cases. It's a matter of a different emphasis that is being placed. Americans aren't paying for a better standard of care, they're paying for a different KIND of care. Your cancer argument has been massively misleading, and hand picked and presented in such a way as to help make your point. I once again accuse you of intentionally misleading debate tactics. How do you answer this claim?

I suggest you reread the Anthopolos-Becker article. The claim it makes is that the difference in counting methods and deteriorating data collection make comparisons difficult between developing countries and former soviet republics, and industrialized western nations which adhere to the standards provided by the WHO. We're not discussing Botswana and Kazakhstan however. I'm talking about Canada, Germany, France the UK and the USA. The conclusions of the Anthopolos-Becker article are therefore irrelevant to the discussion at hand, though they are relevant in other discussions. Thank you for trying.

Yeah, another point, the Anthopolos-Becker article provides a model for correcting under-reported infant mortality data. Of the countries listed in the Infant mortality data I provided, Anthopolos and Becker only provide a corrected figure for the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. I have not pointed to a single one of those countries as a successful healthcare model.
So the Anthopolos-Becker article, while interesting has no bearing on this conversation, as it's methods and critiques do not apply to the countries to which I am comparing the United States. Thank you for allowing me to address this concern.

what is the difference in infant mortality rates across differing US states? how does the number of beds/doctors compare across state borders? what about infant mortality rates? what about cancer deaths?

now i know there are some specific weird things going on, like massively higher income rates of DC, without any correlation in the health (they are actually worse off) but DC is a special case (and not even a state) i'm sure any state which has large numbers of retirees migrated from other states (florida?) would show differences aswell, but what is actually going on in america can be better shown by looking at the data which is out there (and i haven't seen it yet.)

I have data on IMR for my dissertation. It's from the UN.

http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3A77

Anyway I have this all on spread if you want it.

Mafia, Your OECD data is absolutely worthless as far as comparative cancer deaths. The study I linked to showed rates for specific diseases and used four different ones I believe. My study also showed its sources, named the authors, and even had explanatory statements from the same.
The OECD date you provided for cancer had nothing. Purely nothing.
Now if you or I were in business together and we were making presentations to our board they would discard your data out of hand.
Meaningful judgments can't be based on such vague, ambiguous data.
I clicked on the links at the bottom of the cancer death page and it was dead also.
On top of that I also call into veracity any data supplied by an authoritarian regime like Fidel's.
Please don't even ask for Fidel's government to be given credibility as forthcoming.

Basically you'll ignore any data that doesn't confirm your worldview. Got it.

The Cuban medical system is quite honestly one of the better ones in the world. Cuban trained doctors and nurses are sent to other areas for relief aid and are pretty well-regarded by the international community. Castro isn't forthcoming about certain things, sure, but he's not prone to abject lies like, say, Kim Jung Il.

I've read most of this thread and I must say most of it misses the point about universal healthcare by a country mile. As a 'consumer' of healthcare on occassions I care little about whether the NHS has a 'better' infant mortality rate or cancer survival rate or any other host of statisical measures. What ius important to me is that everyone who I love in the world can have free access to top quality healthcare when they need it; and if I pay a liitle more in my taxes because the universal nature makes it ineffecant then that is a price worth paying.

The NHS has many faults and may need a overhaul, we need to look closely at whether the taxpayer should pay for ellective treatments like IVF for example and even consider making the NHS unsue-able - but there i not one policital party that I know off that would even consider changing the free-at-point=of-use principle. Once you have had something so great, you never change it.

"What ius important to me is that everyone who I love in the world can have free access to top quality healthcare when they need it; and if I pay a liitle more in my taxes because the universal nature makes it ineffecant then that is a price worth paying."

Now, if my first language was English and not numbers then I would have said something like that.

"Mafia, Your OECD data is absolutely worthless as far as comparative cancer deaths. The study I linked to showed rates for specific diseases and used four different ones I believe. My study also showed its sources, named the authors, and even had explanatory statements from the same.
The OECD date you provided for cancer had nothing. Purely nothing." - Oh my god Tettleton. Oh my god. You have to be a troll. There is no way you can actually be this stupid, you have to be pretending. Your IQ would have to be in the negatives for you to be this unbelievably, abysmally and consistently unable to understand anything I've been trying to explain. But I'm a patient man, I'll give it one more try, but I need you to meet me halfway. I need you to do your absolute best to try and understand this before one of us dies of old age. And I'm already 23, so that only gives us about 50-55 years, a bit of a stretch, but I believe in you.

Now, after all that abuse, read this carefully. The OECD doesn't list authors, because all the data comes from the OECD statistics department, which is made up of members of the statistical agencies of member nations and the UN. All the data in question comes directly from the governments of the countries in question. They're not referring to other tables you can find on the internet, they're going right back to the data collected by Statistics Canada and it's equivalent agencies in different countries or the WHO. You'll note that data from agencies like Statistics Canada, the American CDC and so on, also do not list sources or authors. Does this make them unreliable? No it doesn't. And I think you realize that, because rather than claim that the CDC report on infant mortality I cited wasn't reliable, you simply ignored it. But that's what I'm saying. You should treat the OECD data in the same way you would treat data from government statistical agencies or an agency like the WHO or some other arm of the UN.

"Now if you or I were in business together and we were making presentations to our board they would discard your data out of hand." - No they wouldn't, because they have heard of the OECD. Most people have! You would have too, if you didn't have such a huge blind spot towards any data that contradicted your political beliefs.

I put it to you Mr. Chew that you are trying to make it so that only your data will be considered in this debate. That is dishonest and it is not worth debating with someone who's idea of debating is to say "I have this data, that completely proves my point, discussion over." Either debate with the evidence, all of it, or rest well at night secure in your faith that your study is the only, real, reliable piece of information ever to have existed, and leave this forum alone.