World Health Report 2000: Still the Worst Study Ever
Writing in Commentary magazine, Scott Atlas revisits the Worst Study Ever. During the health reform debate no doubt you heard pundits mention that the U.S. Health Care System ranked 37th over all — just below Costa Rica and only slightly above Slovenia and Cuba. The source of this claim is a World Health Organization (WHO) report released a decade ago. The World Health Report 2000 ranked nearly 200 nations on their health care systems.
The research was designed in such a way to elevate socialized health care systems funded with tax dollars higher in the rankings than those countries relying on a mix of public and private coverage. According to Atlas:
A matter-of-fact endorsement of wealth redistribution and centralized administration should have had nothing to do with WHO’s assessment of the actual quality of health care. For the authors of the study, the policy recommendation preceded the research.
The study’s failings were plain from the outset and remain patently obvious; but they went unnoticed, unmentioned, and unexamined because World Health Report 2000 was so politically useful.
Interestingly, when billionaire Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi needed heart surgery, he left from Italy (ranked No. 2) and flew over France (ranked No. 1) and other countries that ranked higher than the United States in order to have surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) report ranking countries’ health care systems had little purpose other than political. Why the WHO never considered that such a list would alienate many of the lower-ranking countries’ health care systems is hard to fathom. It also makes one wonder why the WHO wanted to create a ranking that was such a slap in the face to the United States. This especially seems ill-advised considering the United States’ public health funding to countries around the world.
People go where they get prompt, high-quality care. They don’t weigh their options based an arbitrary measures like wealth redistribution.
And still, the study has more legs than a millipede.
Searching on yields 27,700,000 Google hits, 10,700,000 in the last year, and 217,000 in the last week.
Good post, Devon. The millipede needs to be squashed.
You have many valuable insights to share. But, why do you cheapen your posts with a comment such as, “… Interestingly, when billionaire Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi needed heart surgery, he left from Italy (ranked No. 2) and flew …[to] the United States in order to have surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.”
Regardless of the validity of the 2000 WHO study, you know that the rankings claimed to measure the quality of healthcare for a country’s entire population- not just its elite.
Well, ok Plac Ebo, why don’t we get a poor Italian Gypsy with cancer and ask them?
Plac Ebo writes:
“Regardless of the validity of the 2000 WHO study, you know that the rankings claimed to measure the quality of healthcare for a country’s entire population- not just its elite.”
Yet as I recall the “study” was conducted by surveying each country’s health care elite — health ministers and the like. There were no objective measurements at all.