America's health care debate revolves around two talking points, both of which lead the discussion down some nonproductive alleys.
The first point is that on certain key dimensions — lifespan, infant mortality and so forth — America's metrics underperform other developed countries and even some lesser-developed countries. The second is that Americans spend more on health care than any other country, both per capita and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.
We'll save the first point for another day, other than to say that many of the oft-cited metrics are half-truths, outright falsehoods or non sequiturs. America's quality of care could be significantly better than it is, but it's still at or near the world's pinnacle. The oft-cited comparisons with other countries rest on an aging, poorly executed paper from the World Health Organization. (For those impatient to know why, Google Glen Whitman's “Who's Fooling WHO” and Scott Atlas' “The Worst Study Ever?”)
