(18) America’s lower life expectancy compared to countries with socialist health care proves that their medical systems are superior.
President Obama has too much intellectual pride to make such a specious argument, so instead we have to keep hearing it from his half-wit supporters.
These Democrats are all over the map on where precisely Americans place in the life-expectancy rankings. We’re 24th, according to Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Barbara Boxer; 42nd, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell; 35th, according to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson; and 47th, according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
It appears that the U.S. may have less of a “life expectancy” problem than a “math competency” problem.
As previously mentioned (by me), the citizenry’s health is not the same thing as the citizenry’s health care system.
In addition to having a seemingly high rate of infant mortality — based on biology, lifestyle and definitional differences, not medical care — Americans are also more likely to overeat and smoke than people in other developed nations. The two biggest killers in the Western world are obesity and smoking.
Liberals shouldn’t have to be reminded how fat Americans are. They’re the ones always chortling about obese Americans. A 2004 New York Times article leeringly quoted a foreign doctor, saying: “We Europeans, whenever we came to America, we always noticed the enormous number of obese people on the streets.”
Somewhat surprisingly to those of us who have long admired France for its humanitarian smoking laws, until the mid-1980s, Americans had had the highest rate of smoking in the developed world. To be fair, the French are still being exposed to large amounts of smoke due to all the cars Muslims keep setting on fire.
In 2003, America led the world in smoking-related deaths among women — followed by Hungary. Simply excluding all smoking-related deaths from the World Health Organization’s comparison of life expectancies at age 50 in 20 developed nations would raise U.S. women’s life expectancy from 17th to 7th place and lift American men from 14th to 9th place.
Oh and by the way, Americans are also more likely to die in military combat than the whimpering, pant-wetting cowards our military has spent the past 70 years defending — I mean, “our loyal European allies.” This is a health risk Europeans have managed to exempt themselves from by living in a world that contains the United States military.
These are risk factors that have nothing to do with the health care system. To evaluate the quality of our health care, you have to compare apples to apples. We have to look at outcomes for specific medical conditions.
Although the United States has a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer and diabetes compared to Europe — because of lifestyle choices and genetics — it also has better survival rates across the board for all these medical conditions.
The most revealing international comparisons look at cancer survival rates, because of the extensive record-keeping for this disease by all countries.
A European study found that, compared to 18 European countries, the U.S. had strikingly higher survival rates in all 12 cancers studied, except for one: stomach cancer. Even there, the survival rates were close — and the difference was attributed to the location of the cancer in the stomach.
For all types of cancers, European men have only a 47.3 percent five-year survival rate, compared to 66.3 percent survival rate for American men. The greatest disparity was in prostate cancer, which American men are 28 percent more likely to survive than European men.
European women have only a 55.8 percent chance of being alive five years after contracting any kind of cancer, compared to 62.9 percent for American women.
In four cancers — breast, prostate, thyroid and skin melanoma — American survival rates exceed 90 percent. Europeans have a 90 percent survival rate for not one of those cancers.
Most disturbingly, many cancers in Europe are discovered only upon the victim’s death — twice as many as in the U.S. The European study simply excluded cancers that were first noted on the death certificate, so as not to give the U.S. too great an advantage.
There are no national registries for heart disease, as there are for cancer, making survival-rate comparisons more difficult. But treatments can be measured and, again, Americans are far more likely to be on medication for heart disease and high cholesterol — medications that extend the lives of millions, which were developed by those evil, profit-grubbing American drug companies.
To get to the answer they want (America is not as good as Sweden!), liberals prattle on about “life expectancy” — and hope no one will mention monster truck races, Krispy Kremes, diversity and Virginia Slims. As the saying goes: Life doesn’t last longer in socialist countries; it just feels like it.
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