If you look at the World Health Organization’s ranking of nations by the quality of their health care systems, the U.S. ranks 37th—that’s just behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia, which is followed by Cuba. So despite Cuba’s being an impoverished nation that the U.S. has boycotted economically for decades, it ranks only slightly behind the U.S. in the quality of its health care.

However, if you use the more closely watched infant mortality statistic, things look much worse. The CIA actually rates the U.S. 180th in infant mortality, which is just one ranking better than Cuba, although the CIA data shows 5.82 deaths per 1,000 live births for Cuba vs. 6.26 for the United States. Not sure why the CIA ranks the U.S. ahead of Cuba for infant mortality.

Kuwait, by the way, ranks 45th for overall health and 159th for infant mortality. The latter statistic puts it just one notch ahead of Costa Rica (and way ahead of the U.S.).

The Republicans keep whining about how important health-care decisions would be made by faceless Federal bureaucrats instead of by doctors. But how is that worse than decisions made by greedy insurance company bean counters?

All the other industrialized countries (plus some non-industrialized countries such as Costa Rica, Cuba and Kuwait) have universal health care. And the people in those countries all have greater life expectancies and lower infant mortalities than the U.S.

But the politicians in this country (all the Republicans and half the Democrats) have been bought off by large contributions from the insurance companies. And the rest of the Democrats have been bought off by ambulance-chasing sheisters.

So far as I’m concerned, Obama’s program sucks precisely because he doesn’t try to put the insurance companies out of business. Instead, he’s going to let them run it just like the Republicans did (with Medicare D, etc.).

So that means health care costs will continue to soar, and the government will just keep funneling more money to the insurance companies so that their executives can steal the money and get rich!

When Medicare-D was introduced by the Bush league, my insurance company (Health Net) increased my premium and cut my benefits (they no longer pay for eyeglasses, hearing aids or dental care, and their copayments for generic drugs are higher than the cash price for those drugs at Costco, Walmart or Walgreen’s).

The last statement I got from Health Net showed that I had paid over $200 out of pocket for drugs this year, while Health Net had paid a grand total of $8.00.

The way insurance is supposed to work is that the premiums of low-risk patients subsidize the costs for high-risk patients. Instead, the insurance companies dumped the highest risk people (babies, disabled veterans and senior citizens) onto the government Medicare and Medicaid programs. Meanwhile, the insurance companies kept the low-risk people (healthy people with good jobs) and charged them sky-high premiums.

So if we had universal health care, we would have a genuine insurance system for the first time!

It should actually cost the government less because the low-risk people would be subsidizing the high-risk people the government is paying out for. Right now, the insurance companies don’t even want to pay for the sick patients they do have on their rolls.

What’s more, if somebody is forced to change jobs, their new insurance company refuses to cover their “pre-existing conditions.”

It’s a disgrace!