I really don’t know what to make of the healthcare political arguments as they happen, but I am firmly in the system-needs-fixing camp. Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times clarifies why.

The data he cites is so startling, it bears repeating. According to recent surveys by organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:

  • the United States ranks 31st in life expectancy, tied with Kuwait and Chile
  • the U.S. ranks 37th in infant mortality and 34th in maternal mortality–an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland
  • a child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden
  • an African-American in New Orleans has a shorter life expectancy than the average person in Vietnam or Honduras
  • Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries–but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take

Read the entire piece for more detail and context. (Bullet points above are quotes from the editorial.)