Yes you read that right! The United States of America is ranked 29th in the world in the key measure of health care systems worldwide - infant mortality. All those countries with those terrible 'socialized health care systems' rank above us. This is a disgrace in the 'greatest', 'wealthiest' country in the world'.
The French, the very mention of these socialists raises the hackles of Republicans (and helped sink John Kerry) but France ranks 9th and Germany comes in at 11th. The US infant mortality rate is roughly 2 times that of France and Germany.
When the Republicans call Senator Obama's tax & health care policies 'class warfare' we should remind them that Bush and McCain are already waging class warfare and they are taking no prisoners, not even children.
The complete rankings are below the fold.
The real bad news is that our infant mortality rates are not falling while rates continue to fall in other countries. We have the most expensive (yep USA #1) and least efficient, least effective (per/$) health care system in the world - USA, USA, USA.
Here is the complete list of infant mortality rates per 1,000 live births for 2004 (and you can bet they've gotten worse in the last 4 years):
- Singapore 2.0
- Hong Kong 2.5
- Japan 2.8
- Sweden 3.1
- Norway 3.2
- Finland 3.3
- Spain 3.5
- Czech Republic 3.7
- France 3.9
- Portugal 4.0
- Germany 4.1
- Greece 4.1
- Italy 4.1
- Netherlands 4.1
- Switzerland 4.2
- Belgium 4.3
- Denmark 4.4
- Austria 4.5
- Israel 4.5
- Australia 4.7
- Ireland 4.9
- Scotland 4.9
- England and Wales 5.0
- Canada 5.3
- Northern Ireland 5.5
- New Zealand 5.7
- Cuba 5.8
- Hungary 6.6
- Poland 6.9
- Slovakia 6.9
- United States 6.9
- Puerto Rico 8.1
- Chile 8.4
- Costa Rica 9.0
- Russian Federation 11.5
- Bulgaria 11.7
- Romania 16.8
Sources: One, Two, Three.
Update Thanks to UncleDavid for the WHO information. The US dropped from 29th to 39th from 2004 to 2006.